I don't just mean outrage or regular rage, I mean shock that someone was to the left of "legal weed and free college but only for those that operate a successful business for 3 years in a disadvantaged community" 
takes.
I think federating took them by surprise, looking back. For about a week, those smug liberals were at a loss to even fathom what Hexbears were saying, and could only chant bullshit about how we're Russian/Chinese bots.
Sure they still do that but they've slightly adapted to Hexbear presence.
"I'm as left as they come, but I trust the CIA and support every US foreign policy position"
the media are bad and duplicitous and lie all the time to make money for their capitalist owners. except about Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, China, Stalin and the DPRK, I still believe all those lies because I'm a good kid and so is America
When something bad happens in a socialist country it's the government's fault, when something bad happens in a capitalist country it's the individuals fault (or it's a good thing, actually)
Good points. When it comes to the DPRK, I think a part of it is that the weird and wonderful stories are easy to believe because anything could happen in a land of unicorns and necromancy.
in a land of unicorns and necromancy.
Not sure if next campaign title or just a play that exists in world.
the media are bad and duplicitous and lie all the time to make money for their capitalist owners. except about Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, China, Stalin and the DPRK, I still believe all those lies because I'm a good kid and so is America
They are first and foremost, nationalists. It's unsurprising that they accept and go along with everything when they are told "this is good for america". As nationalists they simply bat for their team.
We have to make them stop being nationalists first in order to get that to stop happening. Then the rest opens up.
This is a good ovservation. It seems to me that historically the rise of liberalism is paralel to the rise of the nation state. This may be a historical accident or may be because merchant capital and financial capital beneft from a strong state and viceversa. One would expect that as capital becomes international the libs would become less nationalistic. But there is still a large block that would semengly go against their own material interests starting stuff with china for example.
Nationalism is a competing ideological framework to class consciousness. Get people to identify with their “nation” instead of with their class and you can get them to fight and die in your wars for you instead of turning around and pointing the guns at you, the capitalist. Nationalism essentially won out in Europe over class consciousness when it came to WW1 and even the social democrats and socialists of most of those countries embraced it and supported their countries in that war EXCEPT for in Russia where the people embraced class consciousness and communists came to power.
Yes of course. But there are many ways for the elites to repress the other clases, and this includes atacking class conciousnes. They can send people to die for god, gold and the local lord. And this has been the norm through history. The nation state is 500 years old or so. And most of that time it was limited to a small periferal area of the world.
At an ideological level, we know the main actors of history are classes. While facists and some libs think its the state.
My question is wether the nationalism in lib ideology is an accident of history. That the nation state arose do to geografical conditions that were only tangentially related to the rise of capitalism.
The alternative is that bourgeoise capitalism and the modern nation state in particular are linked in a more fundamental way.
The state itself rose as part of the need for the ruling class to have violent suppression against the classes it exploits. The nation state on the other hand is partially an accident of geography due to most people not travelling far(or having the means to), and liberalism today takes advantage of this as a tool of racial conflict dividing the working class but I think it's most likely that this was simply a useful tool for adopting a hostile stance to indigenous populations. They're "barbarians" therefore it is ok for us to kill them all and take their land. Very useful for colonialism.
Master race and untermenschen nazi ideas come from the ruling class justifying their right to rule as "betters", and likely evolved as various capitalist families sought to adapt the divine right of kings to bourgeoise rule. In particular it rose during an era of far greater class conflict than we have currently today so they had a lot of cause to try and provide reasons for their rule as socialist sentiment boomed.
One would expect that as capital becomes international the libs would become less nationalistic.
American nationalism serves as a useful tool as it's essentially the leader of the capitalist empire. If you view capitalism primarily as the imperial core(european+american global north or "international community") exploiting the periphery (global south) with the US as the leading force of this empire then the usefulness of this nationalism kind of explains itself.
If we break the american soft-left libs out of a national mindset and into a global one where they no longer view themselves as citizens of america but instead as citizens of the world we will find ourselves a lot more allies.
Good post. Thank you for yoir toughtful response. It is very clear the state in general arose as a tool for the ruling class. I like the idea that ideological justifications such as divine rigths of kings gain importance as a funcion of class conflict. Im thinking of primitive temple states in sumeria that requiered the regular kidnaping of statless people to mantain a labor force. Or other teocratic goverments.
As for the nation state as a geografic accident. Thats what i ment if it is an acvident of history. Western europeans wer unable to form large states mostly because of their periferal position in eurasia. And since liberalism and developed in europe they just happen to develop together.
But this new state differs from previous states. There has been a trend in increasing organisation, tax base and scope of the state during the early modern era. The ancient regime be it the roman empire or grat han or more feudalistic polities rarely got a tax base of over 5%.
One exame may be tbe rise of europen trade in the indian ocean in the modern era. At that time the europeans still lacked a technological advantage. But their merchant companies were backed by the power of nation states allowing them to take more risks and corner certain markets. While the local traders originally more numerous were private concerns that did not have the cohesion of a single company.
It would also appear that certain aspects of liberalism arose once the industry of violence became separate from economic production. In a fedal system a landlord controls production because he holds the land by force of arms. It is not so for the bourgoise. That is why a strong state with a tigther mo opoly on violence becomes a concern.
Maybe this is not posible if your polity is over a certain geografical size. Maybe its not so coincidental.
As for modern libs. I was thinking that eventually a strong staye would become its own economic interest affecting the interests of capital. And we sort of see them calling for deregulation and international arbitrage tribunals and so on. Specially in the clinton years. But i guess they never trurly became internationalized.
But wat you said makes sense. Capital still has a lot of its interests tied to the political structure of empire. They become more nasionalistic now that there are international contenders.
Honestly I am not that left. I just want an internationalist world order in which the means of productions are under shared democratic rational control of the working class to enable survival on the world, sustainable eco systems and the realm of freedom which enables us to work little and enjoy being humans for the sake of being human. That isn't that much.
Yeah I'm authoritarian; I love dictatorships.
spoiler
OF THE PROLETARIAT
I agree. I mean, you don't even want to abolish the neurotypical hivemind of consensus reality. Sounds pretty lib to me
listening to DSA sing it without a hint of irony left me with a bitter taste in my mouth
ahh but they call themselves socialists you see, nevermind the contents of the lyrics
oh my god yeah DSA
they are democrats who wear red
Hey, some local chapters have been taken over by MLs, anarchists, and maoists.
Aren't they pretending to believe we're all Republicans doing a three year long larp as leftists?
That's their latest thing yeah. "Well see you both agree with Republican ideas of isolationism and therefore you must ACTUALLY be right wing."
Libs plz. We believe in US isolationism because we want the US to stop fucking around with the rest of the world and leave the rest of the world alone to figure itself out without being bombed and coerced into doing what the US wants the world to do. The right believes in US isolationism because they're nationalists who believe the US should only help ourselves and should never help anyone outside our borders. We're literally polar opposites. There is no overlap in those 2 viewpoints.
The paleocons did and still do favor isolationism. There are multiple tendencies on the right as on the left
im not so much a us isolationist but more so i want the usa to stop doing things overseas on account that it stops existing altogether
Is it isolationism if you want to isolate the US to a place outside of this mortal coil?
I knew it wasn't going to be long before they started calling us MAGA Communists. They can't fathom people who can laugh at Trump and not be completly deranged over him destroying DEMOCRACY ™ so we have to secretly be supporting him.
him destroying DEMOCRACY ™
How can Trump destroy what never existed? They treat the government and it's institutions like some sacred cow, the world would be better off if the US balkanized and disintegrated into an impotent power.
can't believe I've been working this desk job for 3 years already - I need to talk to my manager about moving up a GS step
We will see coping mechanisms in the coming days that we cannot even imagine now.
what's funny are the ones who think we're right-wing because they've never heard anyone criticize liberals from the left before
Yeah that shit is hilarious. It's like finding out words mean different things in different places. It'd be like if I went to England and started arguing with people because they call apartments "flats."
Wait, we're not conservatives? Then why have we been celebrating our big wet boy?
"I'm good because I'm left of conservatives, and nobody's better than me, so obviously if somebody is to the left of me they're lying"
I had to make a new main account on a different instance so I could maintain access to HexBear communities. I am so thrilled to finally be interacting with a community of actual leftists! Drag me further to the left daddies✊
Change over to a hexbear account so we don't see "lemme.ee" at the end of your name. I try not to, but I judge those users a lot more critically. (Half joke)
But really, welcome and hope you find what you're looking for!
On the other hand, the emojis are bigger for other accounts, which some would see as a plus
I've got used to the huge emojis. Not sure if I want to see them in their natural form.
Liberals either think or want to think they have a monopoly on being "the left wing party". They also don't want to think too hard, and are at their heart capitalist, which means they prefer a prescribed identity that requires no effort on their part.
One of the more interesting takes I've ever heard on Trillbillies podcast was that the Democratic Party is mostly a lifestyle brand at this point. One that's designed to make the member look good, virtuous and just, but not requiring any participation. They have just enough stolen accolades that were really hard fought movements from grassroots organizing to point at so they can say "we"re the good guys".
Well thought out and well read political leftists pose a threat to their cultural hegemony and therefore undermine their manufactured righteousness. If enough people got wind that the DNC and their voters are basically a paper tiger in the face of a fascist takeover, they will lose their cushy, do nothing lifestyles. They will either have to help us, or join the fash.
The real sad part is that it's mostly done for treats, and even those will get taken away as soon as the austerity a lot of us are already facing really kicks in.
Can't wait to be blamed for "taking
's grill and steaks".They will either have to help us, or join the fash.
And they've all decided since we were rude to them by saying they weren't as far left as morally possible that we're mean so they deff aren't siding with us.
Yo same. I was literally a liberal pretty much right up until I learned I could be a communist.
One of the things that pushed me into leftism about seven years ago was the realization that there even WAS something to the left of me.
Yeah the same is true for me being anti-car. When I first heard of European congestion taxes when I was car-brained I was like "that is literally insane, how are you going to restrict poor people's right to get into the city". But after learning about other forms of transit and the fact that it's affordable and cheap and objectively better than private vehicles, I realized that just realizing that other transit options exist makes me move further 'left' lol.
I always dreamed of a united human race like in Star Trek or Mass Effect. I remember wishing there was an Anthem for mankind, and then I heard the lyrics to The Internationale...and found a Richard Wolff video explaining what Socialism actually is.
The Harry Potter limits of liberalism jpeg helped a lot too.
I realized in the space of a week that I was a Socialist, not a Liberal. I didn't just want some people liberated, I want everybody liberated. A united human race, unshackled by nationalism or racism or sexism or economic inequality.
... and then I started to realize how many other people I admired had been Socialists, like MLK and Einstein, and then I started to realize how much we've been deliberately lied to about almost everything in the US...
... and then I started to realize how many other people I admired had been Socialists, like MLK and Einstein, and then I started to realize how much we've been deliberately lied to about almost everything in the US...
basically every time you learn about a historical figure who seems cool, it turns out they founded the US Communist Party or spent 6 months in revolutionary Moscow or aided peasant villages in Mao-era China
Left does not equal good, more left does not equal more good. Left and right are rarely useful ways of analysing politics: it really only says something if you are talking about the left or the right broadly or talking about the left and right position to a particular position (and even then I try to avoid.) I know you're doing a bit and its funny but I'm always surprised by how many people I organize with think this way, and it's disorienting
It’s idealism. Mapping out the world according to some made up model in your brain
That's very similar to my experience albeit I was always a little further left than progressive liberalism. I just lacked the theory and vocabulary to articulate my politics. Ironically it was first breadtube, then chapo (the podcast), and finally the subreddit that helped galvanize my preexisting communist leanings.
Regarding competing 'echo chambers', we've been inoculated to liberalism because we get exposed to it on a nonstop near-daily basis in our work/social/ whatever lives and come here to gripe about that specicifically, meanwhile these libs have literally never been exposed to opinions to their left because they're used to living in exclusively
curated spaces.also I'm not a bot I'm a vocaloid, gosh
i like when i talk to someone who is american and im also american and i come from the point of view that america is the greatest force for evil in the world today and they think somehow that makes me a trump supporter
Our existence invalidates their entire worldview. Most online libs sense of self is that they are the good, smart people, and the only ones who could ever be opposed to them are the bad, dumb republicans (who for some reason are not irredeemable and we need a strong republican party for some reason
who for some reason are not irredeemable and we need a strong republican party for some reason
I keep going back to this blog post every time this topic comes up
No, must have missed that being posted on the front page for weeks
Them disliking us is a given. Them being surprised by Hexbear's takes was novel to me.
Being surprised by Hexbear's takes?
Well at one point, yes, I did feel genuine surprise that people existed that didn't like liberalism coming from the left, if that's what you mean. I learned about that in my 20s.
Most of the people on lemmy probably are in their 20s.
Migration from the corporate walled garden internet to the fediverse is going to be an eternal september of culture shock.
"Let people enjoy things"
"Fuck you, because you said that stacking rocks hurts local ecosystems I'm going to stack rocks out of spite to stick it to the scolds."
Liberal here, sick to death or how condescending the democrats have become. I had a blast watching them froth at the mouths. It was beautiful.
You'll fit right in, the secret is that we're all liberals here. Except for the one of us each week chosen by lottery to be the leftist.
You're either gonna leave and hate us or you're gonna stay and also hate us
Respectfully, Capital is probably the absolute worst starting point for socialist theory.
Something like the Manifesto, The State and Revolution, or even Blackshirts and Reds would be much better starting points IMO
Totally with you on that. The Capital is a "colossal" starting point. And lot's and lot's of theory has been written since 1894.
On the other hand, Blackshirts and Reds is an awesome place to start.
is an eye opener for libs who want to read. At least in my experience.Daddy Lenin too. In my case, I started with "Imperialism..." at the University and it was the kicker to my freefall into becoming a
.I used to say the same thing, now i just point people to Graeber or Zinn and let them radicalize on their own, if they identify as liberal and want reading recommendations. Debt: The First 5000 Years did more to push me leftward than State and Revolution. I assume this would be true for most people who aren't familiar with the context of the soviet revolution.
Am I an anrchiddie if I say the conquest of bread is a good starting point?
I'm ML and haven't read Kropotkin, but i think his idea of mutual aid as a part of evolution is really valuabe, since social darwinism has so poisoned lib thought especially in the US that most USians don't differentiate between Darwin's actual scientific theory and social Darwinism, to the point of believing "survival of the fittest" is a Darwin quote.
The book to go for then would be "Mutual Aid: A Factor in Human Evolution", right? As far as I know, Conquest is mainly a utopian socialist thought experiment about how production (using technology and figures of his time) could easily provide for everyone with much less work. I think it's valuable, just has different subject matter.
Yeah that's the one i was thinking about. Thanks.
It honestly really irritates me how influential social darwinism has been in the US and i really wanted to rant about it lol
I fully support it, just wanted to comment on book topics. Social darwinism is insidious and it is difficult to imagine criticizing it too much.
Yes. I'm not sectarian to anarchists in general, but conquest of bread is basically a fantasy novel taking itself seriously. It isnt grounded in any research. If you like the ideas presented in conquest of bread, that's fine, but it doesn't actually go into how those ideas can be achieved, outside of mostly "people will just spontaneously do it"
I don't think this is a bad thing though. Books like the bread book or The Dispossessed can help open people up to a leftist POV by showing them that there are very realistic alternatives to a capitalist system that, while utopian, would be so cool to live under. I feel like we should push people less towards "gloom and doom" books as their first book.
I guess I would prefer books that laid out a realistic system that was better than laid out an unrealistic system that was better.
CoB is based on economic research, not magic, but absolutely is utopian in basically eliding the problem of "how would this ever be established?"
My partner double checked a bunch of the numbers he cited and he plays very loosey goosey with it.
The critique of the gotha program is very short and makes some good points about materialism.
Listen to Teach Me Communism! It's the podcast that turned me into a leftist.
It's a nonbinary person and their brother basically doing a book club every week and explaining a different piece of socialist literature or socialist history. They start from square zero (the manifesto), work their way through stuff like The State and Revolution, and do a toooon of history. Also they've done the podcast for the past 3 years, do it entirely for free, and donate all of the money from their Patreon to a local Dallas mutual aid fund. I have such an unhealthy parasocial relationship with them but I'm an ML now and love them (though they do a lot of anarchist stuff too).
Really wish more people would suggest them more!!
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is the text that persuaded me, on a proximate level, into Marxism. It's very accessible so long as one is alright with the rambling historical anecdotes (which I generally quite enjoyed).
"It is undeniable that all liberals are either pro-torture, or else not anti-torture"
Lemmitor:
when people live in an echo chamber, the outside is scary and confusing
Sure, Hexbear was its own kind of echo chamber, but I think it got a weird sense of solidarity overall and the internal struggle sessions were mitigated somewhat by just how sheer fucking liberal the federated communities were revealed to be next door.
Especially programming.dev. What the fuck is up with those cryptofascists?
You get plenty of good folks in programming, but you also get high volumes of:
- Stemlords
- Bazingas
- Temporarily embarrassed millionaires
- Labor aristocrats
- Misogynists
Lots of underlying drivers of reactionary thought.
hey guys im just hanging out here with all the good folks in programming they are just out of frame
Desperately pushing aside the fascist and libertarian programmers to reach the hot trans stalinist in the back row
It's hilarious to see people call this place an echo chamber.
I don't know if I've ever seen a more divided group on literally any given topic.
I can say the word cats and start an argument where I'm taking shit from three different sides, pretty sure thats not an echo chamber.
I love when we go for a walk in the neighborhood and random kitties come up to us and vibe. That's why I adopt cats and set them free in our back yard.
What, are there people against outdoor cats here?
not sure if your serious, but in case; they decimate indigenous fauna such as birds etc
Good thing there aren't any fauns where I live, deer rarely come around my neighborhood.
civility begging us rn not to start this shit again
Unironically have outdoor cats bcs I missed the struggle session and honestly I'd feel mean trapping them indoors all the time
I think it might very well already be submitted. Someone at hexbear used it as an emoji so I saved it (because it's awesome) and I used it now by simply uploading it because I don't know how people get the emojis to appear in the line.
Do I have to be registered on hexbear to get emojis like walter-breakdown to pop up? Or is there a command I'm not entering right? I know I'm doing something wrong.
not seeing it but there's well more than 1200 so it's entirely possible I missed it.
and yeah, emotes are instance specific. feature got upstreamed from hexbear but not a lot of instances are using it atm.
Its full of dudes who make a fuckton of money, lack self awareness, and chase early retirement, they fully think there is a meritocracy. That makes them treat poorer people accordingly.
Unfortunately they don't realize that they are closer to being homeless than they are to being at their daddy Elon or Zuck's level of wealth. One cancer diagnosis and it's over
I was expecting large struggle sessions with lemmygrad over sectarianism and left bashing (we are a ML space), but everyone saw the libs and went full Workers United Front
like I knew in theory we were closer to each other than to the libs but the sheer magnitude has been surprising. we used to have AES struggle sessions every couple of months but virtually everyone closed ranks once federation hit. we've spent so much time arguing over how critical our "critical support" is and it's small potatoes in comparison to "DAE winnie the pooh??"
A lot of them encountered the very thing they've been conditioned to feel disgust towards, and for a lot of them maybe for the very first time in their lives in a conversational capacity. These are people who are inundated on a near-daily basis with propaganda designed to twist the socialist narrative into one of death and destruction that leads to the inevitable collapse of all civilizations unfortunate enough to let it take root.
I don't think that the average liberal is totally apathetic towards everyone but themselves (I think a lot of us have probably identified as such before, be it as a child or long into adulthood,) but their ideas on human rights, social justice, and broader politics are incredibly underdeveloped. When you don't have a considerable wealth of knowledge or experience to draw on, you're a reactionary subject to the pull of your own gut feelings and the preconceived notions instilled in you by your peers.
What I'm getting at is that I think it's important to realize that a lot of the libs pissing their pants at the sight of evil tankies have absolutely no idea what a tankie is or does, and everything they do know is buried under 10 layers of disinformation. This doesn't absolve them of their crimes of grand dumbassery, but I think it's worth considering that a lot of these people would probably agree with much of what we had to say were we to peel back the layers of their programming. Alas, that isn't often realistic and frankly isn't solely* our responsibility.
*edit
hexbear is definitely to the left of all the sites we federated to, and there has been some shit takes by our feddie comrades that were fun to laugh and dunk on, but i feel like we do have a responsibility to educate the other instances so long as they are willing to be educated. like im not at all against giving the other feds like blajah a second chance if they listen to us and understand why they suck.
hexbear is definitely to the left of all the sites we federated to
I don't think it's really to the left of lemmygrad, though I wouldn't say the reverse either
most of you libs are libs like lemmygrad but I, the one true leftist am certainly to lemmygrad's left
I agree. I wouldn't try to take the dunk culture out of Hexbear, and many people deserve to be dunked on, but sometimes if they don't seem like a lost cause you gotta just teach them what you can and then leave them something to think on that they can hopefully look back on positively.
On the other hand I have a lot of sympathy for people who do try to have a good faith discussion and then after a dozen thousand word comments the lib just goes "don't know why I bothered obviously none of you know how government works"
I'll have to admit I was also knocked down by seeing liberal takes that are so outside of my frame of reference I didn't know anyone thought that way.
For example, there was this one user who had decided to die on the hill of getting rid of welfare because they felt people on it were just lazy.
For example, there was this one user who had decided to die on the hill of getting rid of welfare because they felt people on it were just lazy.
What the fuck is left to be "progressive" about to that liberal, then?
RECRUIT - MORE - LGBTQIA+ - DRONE - OPERATORS?
¯\(•_•)/¯
I got the impression that they were English, in which case there's a trend amongst liberals to be huge fans of austerity. Partly because that's what Blair used to fund bailing out the banks during the financial crash, partly because there's been a concerted push since then to propagandise everyone on benefits as lazy so that people are less bothered by further austerity.
should be massive, anything else is revisionism
hi
it was HER TURN!
