Damn, I wish I loved something as much as liberals love to contribute to the conditions from which fascism arises.
This is probably even worse now, because only the right-wing ideas and the libs complaining about "both sides" get attention in the mainstream media. Libs have their media ecosystem, as do the conservatives. So an average person will not even hear the unfiltered version of the left-wing idea to begin with, so even if the "both sides are the same" argument is obviously crazy, people don't even get a chance to see what the left-wing version is, they will just have to assume that we believe that the train was derailed by aliens or something. Even if leftwingers have amazing messaging, the default will be "both sides are crazy", while some small group will always be won over to the right, with the left-wing argument not being on offer in the first place.
Corporate media. They're not mainstream, they're pretty damn far from it.
How does one get "A piggish characture in a top hat personally ordered this exact accident to happen" from "Corner cutting and neglect in service of minimizing expenses and maximizing revenue for a bunch of management dorks will make disaster of some sort inevitable"
story brain, inability to think systemically, motivated reasoning due to materially benefitting from the status quo
The capitalists have names and addresses. Not exactly shadowy.
The shadowy cabal of the board of directors of Norfolk Southern, and their publicly registered lobbyists. Crazy how you can buy a couple shares and literally call into the cabal meeting every quarter
They also state their intentions loudly and clearly.
One time I was in an argument with a lib over things the CIA did. He refused to believe and when I showed him documentation of the CIA admitting to these horrible things, he accused me of hypocrisy.
"Oh, so we're not supposed to believe the US government unless they say something you agree with?"
Like, dude, wtf do you think the CIA has to gain from confessing to crimes? Are all criminal confessions just lucky breaks for the prosecution?
I see that sort of thing so much, like these people cannot seem to understand that lies are made with a self-serving intention, not just for the sake of lying because liars love it so darn much. Everybody must be completely honest or completely dishonest, the idea of a government's honesty being context sensitive is beyond the liberal.
I hope none of them are either lawyers or Biblical scholars, just to name two fields where this phenomenon has a name so as to emphasize how crucial a form of evidence it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion_of_embarrassment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_against_interest
There’s a reason why leaked and declassified documents almost always contradict their public statements on TV. By the time they’re leaked or declassified, the majority of Americans already accepted the lie or simply don’t care anymore. It’s like releasing the answers to a test after everyone has taken it.
how do you respond to someone who's skepticism of the government involves believeing the government lies about being worse than they are for no reason
It's trying to muddy the waters with imagery of The Illuminati or some secret society/conspiracy type of thing. Men in a dark room wearing robes and masks instead of just a boardroom
Let's see....
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Capitalists are practically required to maximize their profit or else their service will go under.
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CHUDs think the world's elite want to take over the world, vote away their own wealth, and make everyone equal out of the kindness of their hearts in an overconvulated plot to get revenge on white people.
I dunno lads, both are equally nonsensical.
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Uncomfortable is the average wrecker's favorite word now, Jesus Christ. They realized they could impersonate a smol bean or someone with real emotions to have their shitstirring ideas taken seriously and it was like cavemen discovering fire
Most fascist rhetoric is just leftist rhetoric coopted to divert attention from the real problem towards something else. The fact that they look similar is not surprising, you just need to pay attention to which one sounds fucking stupid and which one is logically explained by the profit motive.
Volkisch behavior is a big problem in Germany and IIRC there is a specific law against it.
Gee, it’s almost as if people can seize in legitimate issues in bad faith.
I'm probably never going to understand at all how the politically illiterate equate us and fascists. We don't point at anything secret going on, we outline how these exact circumstances lead to these outcomes. We're not talking about shadowy capitalists or secret plans of world domination, the world is already dominated by capitalists who have names in the Forbes 500.
The fascist worldview makes no sense whatsoever and is built entirely on white supremacist racial panic. It requires belief in a high organized group of secret malefactors who use mind control magic to turn the world against white people because they're simply jealous of white people's supposed natural superiority. Everything's a secret war between white people and non-white people. The presumption is white people have a magical code of morals that not only makes a stable society, but somehow makes nature itself work in harmony. There's a very specific structure society is supposed to take, and when there's deviation, the world collapses and humanity goes extinct. The other side of this war might as well be demons. They hate planet Earth and want to subjugate white people because they simply don't like natural harmony. They want birthrates low, they want to enact "globalism" to dilute the power of white magic, and they only benefit from this, because they're chaos demons or something.
I’m probably never going to understand at all how the politically illiterate equate us and fascists
The US education system and news media both inundate American citizens with gumbynism no iphone vuvuzela 100 bajillion dead because no heckin' smol bean business owners allowed to have egg monopolies or sugar plantations. It's the same Protestant work ethic prosperity gospel shit that replaced the Divine Right of Kings a couple of centuries ago, just weaponized against anyone who would rightfully call it out as bullshit. Make no mistake, this is the fallout from decades of domestic Gladio.
I’m probably never going to understand at all how the politically illiterate equate us and fascists. We don’t point at anything secret going on, we outline how these exact circumstances lead to these outcomes. We’re not talking about shadowy capitalists or secret plans of world domination
I think there's a subset of the population that has a hard time believing that anyone could actually think this, perhaps largely because they find the idea of history being driven by material conditions, systemic forces, and accidents to be existentially horrifying. For that group of people, there's a fundamental assumption that both sides must think someone is pulling the strings, and when we criticize capitalism as a system (and specific capitalists for their specific actions), they assume that we must really be just obliquely referring to the same kind of cabal that the far right appeals to. The alternative--that the trajectory of history isn't controlled by anyone at all--is the kind of mind-shatteringly terrifying idea that some people just have a really hard time even entertaining.
this is probably also why liberals believe they can save society by simply placing the correct people in the correct roles, to safeguard any abuses from happening. Liberals also believe in a cabal of secret interests, but they see it as everyone who holds incorrect ideas in their heads. The racist old man down the street is viewed as equally influential in world affairs as Trump himself, because they're both part of the same group of incorrect racists. They're the ones who manifest the thoughtforms with their worldviews. So if worldviews change by elevating people with good, liberal ideas, then that spreads a curative medicine within the thought realm, making society inherently better.
Our claim that people develop their ideology not purely on what they're told and taught, but rather, their experiences and position in the world, to them sounds like we don't believe in human agency. They must necessarily believe you can teach the rich out of their greed, that simple awareness is enough. It's because like you said, many liberals would have to examine why they hold liberal values in the first place. They'd have to question if they benefit from imperialism or poverty
Great observation about human agency. I think this kind of thing also explains the fixation that certain :jordan-eboy-peterson: people have on "postmodernism" as well, and why they see it as basically the same thing as Marxism. The idea is that both ideologies see individuals as merely being a confluence of social categories and forces, with actual agentive action existing only around the margins. This is a sort of failure of imagination, I think--they can't see how there might be room for individual agency while also rejecting Great Man Theory. They think that our denial of the claim that history is driven by a small number of Atlases shrugging at key moments also amounts to a denial that anyone can ever do anything.
Easy, centrists are not actually listening to us at all because our ideas would require them to stop consuming luxury goods for ten seconds and actually stand for something.
We don’t point at anything secret going on, we outline how these exact circumstances lead to these outcomes. We’re not talking about shadowy capitalists or secret plans of world domination, the world is already dominated by capitalists who have names in the Forbes 500.
Okay but... we kinda do though? Try to look at it from a liberal's perspective who watches CNN all day, believes that Biden is the most progressive president since FDR and thinks Bill Gates is a wholesome 100 philanthropist etc.
The left talks a lot about how the CIA is behind all kinds of shit and how x and y are psyops or sth, and we constantly say things like "It's a big club and you're not in it." Do you not get how that would sound conspiratorial to someone? And yeah, sure, a lot of the CIA stuff is declassified and publicly available, but if liberals could read they wouldn't be liberals.
The leftist narrative sounds crazy to liberals because they believe that the wealthy elites are playing fair and earned their way at the top by being hard-working and innovative, and if someone even more hard-working and innovative came along they would have no choice but to make way. They believe in the system. That's why "billionaires are evil parasites who are murdering millions to uphold their own wealth" sounds just as crazy to them as "the shadow cabal wants to establish global communism because they worship satan."
Yeah, I get where you're coming from. It is difficult for middle class liberals to understand the level of horror enacted on the world to prop up billionaires and part of discussing that involves the centuries of imperialism. Liberals often have a cut-off date for when the bad stuff happened. They'll gladly hear us out about the fruit company coups or Guatemala or the possibility that Joseph McCarthy went overboard. Anything post Church Committee sounds like ludicrous speculation to them. Anything after the late 1970s is supposedly when the CIA became a force for good and American military excursions focused on spreading democracy. I've had a hard time convincing liberals that the USA is still enacting horrors to this day, especially in places like Africa and Latin America.
If you can be generous with me, what I think I meant was we don't require all of that to explain ourselves. The billionaires are parasites and so is your local real estate company. The owner of 4 franchised Subway restaurants is a parasite. The landlord you lease from is a parasite, even if he only owns 2 properties. And that's not some clandestine relationship you have with these people, it's everyday circumstances where they're feeding off you. Liberals more often than not will identify with the perspective of the ownership class, either because that's where they aspire or that's where they belong. Like you said, they believe the rich got there by effort and were properly rewarded, because liberals aspire to these same rewards.
Our ideas of everyday relationships between worker and owner, tenant and landlord, etc are that they're inherently exploitative regardless of any secrecy behind the scenes. I do think that's something more unique to the left, that we can explain ourselves in everyday circumstances. No one has to be pulling the strings behind my asshole boss demanding I work 4 hours of overtime without pay. He's an asshole because of that position he wields. Liberals will excuse this with "just work somewhere else" while failing to see capitalism as a worker is simply becoming a servant of one of the various parasites available.
No one is responsible for anything that happens is the centrist view point, which by happenstance is the same thing companies who cause this sort of shit say
