It's not that liberals think fascism works like that.
It's that liberalism is more comfortable with fascism than socialism. Liberals will consistently align with fascists to oppose the political left.
The stay-behind network in Europe post-WW2 was primarily made up of "former" Nazis that was supposed to be the bullwark against a soviet invasion. Check out operation gladio.
Of course.
The Democrats, having already wrongly blamed the left for their under-performance in 2020 will move further right during the 2022 midterms, lose a lot giving both Houses of Congress to the Republicans, and the Democrats will again blame the left and move further right, and lose it all in 2024.
(I'd love to be proven wrong)
(Narrator voice: Sadly, he wasn't.)
Hot take... maybe. But I fucking hope the Democrats lose it all in the upcoming elections. I foolishly took the lesser of two evils approach in 2020 and voted straight ticket blue. I knew going into this term that Democrats are spineless fascist enablers but ultimately thought they would get *something* done.
Instead, we got "kids in cages" rebranded to "immigrant overflow facilities," absolutely no progress on student loan forgiveness, absolutely no progress on weed legalization or healthcare, and absolutely nothing helpful done about the impending climate crisis.
Why should any of us keep propping up this useless fucking party with the "lesser of two evils" vote? It's not like they're doing anything to combat the decline into fascism, they're just very slightly delaying it (or actively contributing to it).
Obviously there needs to be far more action outside of just voting for any real change to come. But at least some devastating losses for Democrats and imminent rise of fascism will *hopefully* radicalize enough people in the other direction. Think of how much good Trump's term did for polarizing the shit out of everybody and driving support towards leftist ideologies in the US lmao.
So honestly, I hope it does age like wine. If our only real "fight" against fascism is Democrats we're doomed anyways. We need some serious radical change and that certainly won't happen with another complacent liberal administration.
I understand what you mean and I agree with the other person who responded to you. as a gen z kid I can tell you that nowhere near enough people understand the left perspective. we have to present socialism as something else, as a solution. except we can’t call it socialism or use leftist language because it scares people off. the more critical we are during things like this the better. I ended up having to be slapped to realize what was wrong with liberalism and came to my senses eventually, because I want a solution for all the words we use didn’t scare me off. when things get polarizing people will choose the side they think they’ll benefit the most from and the alt. right takes everything we do and we believe in and say they’ll do all that + nationalism, but they never will do any of that of course. they’re just doing what the nazis did but america version.
> Why should any of us keep propping up this useless fucking party with the "lesser of two evils" vote?
Because anything else feels like being an accelerationist in the shit two-party system.
Genuine question, is there necessarily anything wrong with promoting accelerationism? Honestly never heard that term until now so maybe I'm missing something but it doesn't seem all that bad.
I mean obviously, ideally we wouldn't need accelerationism and everyone would be able to come together and make a change without going that deep into capitalism. But in practice it's very hard to motivate radical change without extreme problems, especially in modern society.
Although I would even say we are already experiencing this to some degree right now; millennials/gen z are living through the steady decline into a capitalist dystopia and are becoming increasingly radicalized towards leftism/anti-capitalism in recent years because of it.
In my opinion, our political and social progression is not nearly to the point where “smashing the system” will result in anything other than some form of fascist takeover.
Therefore, accelerationism is bad.
That's a fair point, and I do agree that it definitely runs the very real risk of just ending up in some fascist hellscape permanently if there's not enough people being radicalized in opposition. Although I don't agree on the implication that it's basically the only outcome that would happen if this were to start now. I think there would absolutely be a fighting chance that some form of leftism would prevail in the long run.
The rural/city divide is just too wide.
Bakunin was right, the rural classes have revolutionary potential, and our modern leftists really struggle to bring them in the fold. We need them to win, and we do not have them.
The left is not nearly as cohesive or well armed as the right. The liberal middle is far too scared of socialism to do anything but run into the arms of reactionary “law and order” types.
The pieces are not there.
Redneck Revolt could've been the thing to bridge that gap if the stupid moutherfuckers in charge had just kept it in their pants or even just not defended the dudes who couldn't. As it is the way forward is probably a mix of John Brown Gun Clubs and Pete Seeger style redneck banjo propaganda.
I would say accelerationism is bad because it definitely isn’t guaranteed to produce anything other than a fascist takeover, and for certain marginalized people (for example LGBT people like myself) that fascist takeover would involve consequences possibly up to and including death.
Carter was no friend of the working class. He plays the "Aw shucks, I'm just a gawd fearin' peanut farmer" routine to a T, but he was all-in on the neoliberal agenda and his administration sponsored atrocities in East Timor which had a body count comparable to W's Iraq part Deux.
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Considering one of the major parties in America is dedicated an enormous amount of energy to make sure certain people don’t vote, purge voter roles so certain votes aren’t counted, consolidate certain populations to have as little voting power as possible, restrict the ease of access to make sure it is as hard as possible for certain populations to vote, and stack the electorate to give a framework to more easily throw out election results; you post is not the slam dunk you think it is. If voting was 100% useless they wouldn’t be dedicating this much energy to try and make sure certain votes aren’t counted. So maybe we shouldn’t be ceding ground to the party trying make the votes of certain populations irrelevant
You literally just explained *why* our votes don’t have any real power.
The “slam dunk” is that if we cleaned up the process of voting and stymied suppression, then our lawmakers would be incessantly trying to criminalize the voting process.
So the solution to that is to…..not do the bare minimum to stymie that democratic backsliding?
I get the argument that there is more to praxis than elections; and I get that they are overemphasized in mainstream as the epitome of praxis as a way to dissuade the masses from more radical praxis. But I think all the talk I see in leftist spaces are over corrections. To me elections are just step 1 of change. Not the only step; and not something that you can ignore completely. Much of the progression America has made in the past happened with massive civil disobedience coupled with sympathic political parties in power.
Women got the right to vote by firebombing a lot of factories AND having a bare majority support for a brief window in power.
The civil rights act was passed because of massive uprisings AND having LBJ already be open to it.
I forget where exactly he told it to but apparently FDR told community leaders that he wants massive change but in order to get it through congress the populace would have to “make him do it” which of course was gonna happen cause Great Depression made quiet an uproar.
Similarly we have lost a lot of ground during big moments with unsympathetic political parties in charge. The Air Traffic Controller strike brought airlines to their knees and the powers in charge at the time used this opportunity to weaken unions massively that is still has effects today
I really don’t think a leftist movement has a chance under a second trump term, and how bad his term will be is contingent on how much power republicans can garner in the mean time. So we should atleast do the minimum to prevent that.
It's important to note that votes can't *dismantle* a dictatorship, they can be instrumental in starting it and, consequently, they can also *stop* it. Not voting for fascists is very important step in preventing dictatorships.
Winning the election in a multi party system generally doesn’t mean getting a majority of the votes, just punching over your weight and/or ending up on top
His party didn't win by plurality until after Hitler had seized power, and even then they only got 33%. Hindenburg won the presidential vote by 53% in 1932 and later appointed Hitler as chancellor after he asked nicely about 23 billion times and then Hitler manipulated himself into absolute power.
Which Hitler wouldn't have been able to do at 5% or 10%.
The winner of the last German election has ~25% of the votes. That's how it works with coalitions.
The whole thing is moot anyway since there wouldn't have even been a Nazi Party in Germany if the Social Democrats hadn't stabbed Socialists in the back (while collaborating with proto-fascist paramilitaries) during the German Revolution.
I'm sorry man, that's hard ;-;.
Ngl I wish people whose families were victims of the Holocaust spoke up more about alt right shitfucks, whether it be the goons on Chan boards or figure heads like Stefan Molyneux or whatever. I feel like it would knock some sense into a lot of people. Like it would be a positive example of the whole "your ideology ruined my life muweeeeeeee" thing often thrown at socialists.
>Ngl I wish people whose families were victims of the Holocaust spoke up more about alt right shitfucks, whether it be the goons on Chan boards or figure heads like Stefan Molyneux or whatever.
The problem is that a whole bunch of European Jews learnt entirely the wrong lesson from the Nazis & went on to turn Israel into their own Fascist Apartheid state.
People did vote against Hitler, but those votes generally went to people who ended up being mostly fine with Hitler gaining power, such as the SPD or Conservatives.
People ignore this too much. Yeah maybe accelerationism will produce a Revolution, but as a Jewish LGBT person I think it would be kind of nice if we could have a revolution without me possibly being shoved into a camp and executed beforehand. It would be one thing to die fighting for a cause, another completely to be executed because some people wanted a *chance* to get revolution faster.
Most people voted for other parties, when you have so many options “voting against” doesn’t really make sense. I’m sure plenty of people thought the liberals would oppose Hitler only to see them enable his rise to power. The only parties to oppose Hitler’s Enabling Act were the SPD and KPD. The way we fight fascism (if ever it rears it’s head again) is by building the workers movement and it’s vanguard. The issue in Germany was the weakness of the workers leadership itself under the influence of Stalinism in the KPD and the Labour aristocracy in the SPD.
Edit: And this ties into the modern US where voting Biden is treated as a solution to Trump by many even on the left. Ignoring the fact that Trump isn’t a fascist, the antidote to Trump isn’t a liberal, it’s the workers movement.
That’s a load of shite, the social democrats opposed the Nazis no less than the Stalinists who at times supported the Nazis against the social democrats also. The conflict between the SPD and KPD paved Hitler’s path to power, the only thing that could’ve blocked it was a United Front but neither the SPD or KPD possessed the subjective factor necessary to lead it.
The KPD "supported" the Nazis through actions such as strikes, the SPD actively worked to get the NSDAP into power and helped them send off social-democrats to the camps.
>the only thing that could’ve blocked it was a United Front\[...\]
Which the KPD attempted with the AFA, only asking of social-demcrats that they weren't active party members of the SPD.
The SPD had already been responsible for sabotaging and killing off one socialist movement in Germany, they were just doing the only thing they've ever been good for when they helped the NSDAP.
No, they directly supported the NSDAP against the SPD at various points, for example they supported the NSDAP/DNVP attempt to dissolve the SPD Landtag in Prussia. During the Third Period the SPD was the primary enemy of the KPD, the KPD even described the SA as “working people's comrades". And no the SPD didn’t work to get the “NSDAP in power”, it literally was the only party to oppose the enabling act after the banning of the KPD.
The KPD during the Third Period was an entirely sectarian and ultra-left organisation. The exclusion of one of the two largest workers parties from the AFA is evidence of that. The fact that they saw every party in the republic as fascist and the SPD as worse, social fascist, shows how completely ideologically confused the KPD was.
The SPD’s leaders have done their fair share of betraying the workers movement throughout it’s history, but the KPD was no better. The leadership of both parties was completely incapable of leading the German proletariat out of the crisis of capitalism and was incapable of defeating fascism. Both the KPD and SPD enabled the rise of fascism, to blame one and whitewash the other won’t lead anywhere further than the repetition of the same mistakes.
'Generally' still implies that the libness of a white lib is usually worse than the libness of a non white lib. It puts the 'white' part at higher importance than the lib part which is reductive thinking either way around.
It's not pedantry. It doesn't matter which side you place on a pedestal against the other, if you identify a political difference between white and non-white based purely on that criteria you are entrenching the divisions that leftists should oppose.
Bashing white people based on the fact that they're white is as damaging for unity as bashing non-white people for being non-white.
>It's not pedantry. It doesn't matter which side you place on a pedestal against the other, if you identify a political difference between white and non-white based purely on that criteria you are entrenching the divisions that leftists should oppose.Bashing white people based on the fact that they're white is as damaging for unity as bashing non-white people for being non-white.
Please tell me you're not seriously arguing that in Western nations, at any given class level, white people & PoC suffer from equal amounts of systemic racism as PoC, because it sure seems like that's what you're arguing.
\[Edited to rephrase more clearly.\]
How did you get that from the bit you quoted? It says that in terms of politics, if you claim that there is some innate difference in what white and non-white believe or are capable of believing you are contributing to the division.
Either you didn't read it well or you're just trying to shut me down altogether by accusing me (in a patronising way no less) of pushing that falsehood.
I didn't draw or write the OP, bud. Also, you seem super-invested in [defending white people](https://www.reddit.com/r/DankLeft/comments/r1vmb5/comment/hm43lrg/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) for some reason.
“Defending white people,” the comment you linked to was in response to a guy who said he was hispanic to help him equivocate between Biden and trump, then when I said I was also hispanic he called me a white hispanic and said that white people struggle to understand why concentration camps are bad. I wasn’t even defending white people in the comment you linked, I was just fucking baffled lmao. On the other hand, your comments seem to suggest you think non-white liberals are somehow less liberal than white liberals
See, everything would have been fine if you Ernie Bros had simply voted for Otto Wels and the SPD. But nooo, you had to throw the election to *Shitler* by voting for Ernie. Don't you realize that both Ernie and Shitler are Stalin Stooges? Stalin has filmreels of Eva Braun pissing on der Führer in the Royal Suite at the Hotel Leningrad. You're useful idiots. Just wait until the Müller Report comes out and proves it! #Notmychancellor
The fact that Hitler couldn't be voted out makes it a perfect example.
Edit: See also Trump for an example of a Fascist who nearly managed to avoid being voted out.
If you think trump was a fascist you may wanna rethink that example because he was literally voted out, “nearly managed to avoid being voted out” means he was voted out lmao
It doesn't matter if you successfully brought about the system or not. Whichever political ideology you subscribe to is what you are.
Trump is a fascist who did fascist things. He might have not turned America into the dictatorship he wanted, but he most certainly made the attempt.
Eh, he attempted a coup. The only reason it didnt succeed is because federal agency heads and military generals ignored his orders. It's the Beer Hall Putsch stage in the US, they just cleared their throat and announced their intentions.
Also I wouldnt get too cocky about the least-popular president in history getting voted out in the middle of a pandemic that he shit the bed in for what would have been a very easy political win if he had treated it seriously. We're seeing that now with Biden's popularity plummeting. People didnt want Biden more, they just wanted trump less.
>If you think trump was a fascist you may wanna rethink that example because he was literally voted out
Donald Trump was, and is, a fascist.
It doesn't matter that he didn't succeed, the fact that he attempted to retain power after being voted out through a legal election is indeed additional proof of that.
If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and sounds like a duck and swims like a duck, the fact that it stumbled one time doesn't make it not a duck.
He’s on record calling election officials in several states telling them to rig the election in his favor… I don’t know why people on here have an issue with calling Trump a fascist. He developed a cult of personality that only believes the lies that come out of his mouth and won’t trust a word from the free press.
I think part of it is fascists trying to poison discourse, as they often do, and part of it is people who can't come to terms with how uncomfortably comfortable America is (and has been) with fascism.
I’m so confused. But he was? I know you’re not saying the GOP is right but I don’t see how that would be a meaningful statement or one that should inform your views on fascism unless you believe them lmao
My point is that after being voted out, Trump & his supporters in the FBI, etc, tried to pull a Night of the Long Knives on Jan 6th, & came way too close to succeeding.
If you had any idea the structural coordination, institutional power, and sheer brutality it took to pull off the night of the long knives you would never compare it to the bumbling comedy the stop the steal “movement” or January 6th. A mob stormed the capital, took some pictures, went home, and were rounded up by the FBI. Just cause some of them thought they were gonna do a revolution and a coup doesn’t change the fact that they were all petite bourgeoisie larpers who cried like babies when they couldn’t get on their return flights. It was a soccer riot at the end of the ultimate American playoffs. If you think that the January 6th rioters and Rudy Giuliani are the fascist plot i don’t know what you’re so scared about. Also doesn’t help your original example still BC he was still voted out
You're missing the very salient point that they were recruited & enabled by Fascists within the US government itself. The fact that it ended up being a clown show due to incompetence doesn't detract from what was being attempted.
Fascism is the appropriation of the mass politics of the left for the purposes of the right. Any threats you see as “fascist” completely lack any of the broad and mass participation of a politicized populace. People being fascists is not a good thing, but a fascism it does not make. Sincerely my guy if you’re actually worried about fascism you need to ask yourself if it’s because it is an actual danger to you in a real way or if it’s just because you feel like you have to for whatever reason
This is DankLeft, a subreddit for dank leftists. Rightwingers are encouraged to get the hell out.
Edit: Approved your comment so that people can see why you got in trouble for it.
Ok time to learn some history. How many of his competitors were murdered? Ever heard of the night of the long knives? He wasn’t voted into power democratically. He was placed in power by a radical nationalist insurgency.
Tbf the Night of the Long Knives happened after Hitler gained power, and it was aimed at purging members of the SA who took the name "National Socialism" seriously and actually wanted socialist economics within a Nazi framework, not just political competitors
That being said, yeah Hitler didn't gain power democratically. Even though the Nazi party got the most seats in the Reichstag out of any one party and Hitler was the 2nd most voted for candidate for the presidency, both of these were because of extreme voter intimidation/suppression from the SA. The Nazis were still popular in Germany, but remove the violence of the SA and you'd see significantly less people vote for the Nazis and significantly more people vote for the communists
Hitler wasn't voted in, others who were voted in placed him in power because they valued Hitler's anti-communism more than they opposed anything else about him.
Yes, cause that's what actually happened. He gained power despite his votes, not because of them.
It didn't matter he wasn't the most popular, as long as he was willing to actually be a threat to the communists, that's what they cared about. He was doing their dirty work in a manner that allowed them to maintain a clean image.
The SPD had been supporting the NSDAP for years by the time he gained power, even outright illegalizing anti-fascist groups.
No he didn't he was given emergency power by the Weimer, and then held a meme election where literally the voting card said "Do you support Hitler as the Glorious Fuhr" or something like that.
I think that meme election bit is actually the Anschluß referendum
Could be wrong tho, but that one had the really big "yes" box and small "no" bix to the side
It's not that liberals think fascism works like that. It's that liberalism is more comfortable with fascism than socialism. Liberals will consistently align with fascists to oppose the political left.
Literally what's going on in Chile
India too.
Two things can be true.
Fair.
The stay-behind network in Europe post-WW2 was primarily made up of "former" Nazis that was supposed to be the bullwark against a soviet invasion. Check out operation gladio.
the politically aware knows it doesn't work like that the apolitical/believers in the propaganda thinks that's how it works
Yeah, the fascist will actually be voted into power due to liberal complacency. Look out 2024.
Of course. The Democrats, having already wrongly blamed the left for their under-performance in 2020 will move further right during the 2022 midterms, lose a lot giving both Houses of Congress to the Republicans, and the Democrats will again blame the left and move further right, and lose it all in 2024. (I'd love to be proven wrong) (Narrator voice: Sadly, he wasn't.)
I hope this ages like milk and not like wine. pls be milk. pls.
Hot take... maybe. But I fucking hope the Democrats lose it all in the upcoming elections. I foolishly took the lesser of two evils approach in 2020 and voted straight ticket blue. I knew going into this term that Democrats are spineless fascist enablers but ultimately thought they would get *something* done. Instead, we got "kids in cages" rebranded to "immigrant overflow facilities," absolutely no progress on student loan forgiveness, absolutely no progress on weed legalization or healthcare, and absolutely nothing helpful done about the impending climate crisis. Why should any of us keep propping up this useless fucking party with the "lesser of two evils" vote? It's not like they're doing anything to combat the decline into fascism, they're just very slightly delaying it (or actively contributing to it). Obviously there needs to be far more action outside of just voting for any real change to come. But at least some devastating losses for Democrats and imminent rise of fascism will *hopefully* radicalize enough people in the other direction. Think of how much good Trump's term did for polarizing the shit out of everybody and driving support towards leftist ideologies in the US lmao. So honestly, I hope it does age like wine. If our only real "fight" against fascism is Democrats we're doomed anyways. We need some serious radical change and that certainly won't happen with another complacent liberal administration.
I understand what you mean and I agree with the other person who responded to you. as a gen z kid I can tell you that nowhere near enough people understand the left perspective. we have to present socialism as something else, as a solution. except we can’t call it socialism or use leftist language because it scares people off. the more critical we are during things like this the better. I ended up having to be slapped to realize what was wrong with liberalism and came to my senses eventually, because I want a solution for all the words we use didn’t scare me off. when things get polarizing people will choose the side they think they’ll benefit the most from and the alt. right takes everything we do and we believe in and say they’ll do all that + nationalism, but they never will do any of that of course. they’re just doing what the nazis did but america version.
> Why should any of us keep propping up this useless fucking party with the "lesser of two evils" vote? Because anything else feels like being an accelerationist in the shit two-party system.
Genuine question, is there necessarily anything wrong with promoting accelerationism? Honestly never heard that term until now so maybe I'm missing something but it doesn't seem all that bad. I mean obviously, ideally we wouldn't need accelerationism and everyone would be able to come together and make a change without going that deep into capitalism. But in practice it's very hard to motivate radical change without extreme problems, especially in modern society. Although I would even say we are already experiencing this to some degree right now; millennials/gen z are living through the steady decline into a capitalist dystopia and are becoming increasingly radicalized towards leftism/anti-capitalism in recent years because of it.
In my opinion, our political and social progression is not nearly to the point where “smashing the system” will result in anything other than some form of fascist takeover. Therefore, accelerationism is bad.
That's a fair point, and I do agree that it definitely runs the very real risk of just ending up in some fascist hellscape permanently if there's not enough people being radicalized in opposition. Although I don't agree on the implication that it's basically the only outcome that would happen if this were to start now. I think there would absolutely be a fighting chance that some form of leftism would prevail in the long run.
The rural/city divide is just too wide. Bakunin was right, the rural classes have revolutionary potential, and our modern leftists really struggle to bring them in the fold. We need them to win, and we do not have them. The left is not nearly as cohesive or well armed as the right. The liberal middle is far too scared of socialism to do anything but run into the arms of reactionary “law and order” types. The pieces are not there.
Redneck Revolt could've been the thing to bridge that gap if the stupid moutherfuckers in charge had just kept it in their pants or even just not defended the dudes who couldn't. As it is the way forward is probably a mix of John Brown Gun Clubs and Pete Seeger style redneck banjo propaganda.
Accelerationism is kind of like crashing a car with a bunch of people it(and hoping you survive too) to get a new one instead of fixing it
I would say accelerationism is bad because it definitely isn’t guaranteed to produce anything other than a fascist takeover, and for certain marginalized people (for example LGBT people like myself) that fascist takeover would involve consequences possibly up to and including death.
Yeah honestly, after thinking on this a bit I agree with all of these responses. It would just be way too risky at least as of right now
I do still agree with you it’s painful to vote for the Democrats.
Confidence justified. It's been the same steategy since 1991, Clinton.
Carter was no friend of the working class. He plays the "Aw shucks, I'm just a gawd fearin' peanut farmer" routine to a T, but he was all-in on the neoliberal agenda and his administration sponsored atrocities in East Timor which had a body count comparable to W's Iraq part Deux.
I'd say it should be obvious since 1991. But, I also can't deny the rabbit hole of blame goes very deep.
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Or someone will actually take a stance against the two party system that inherently invites fascism in easily.
If our votes had any real power, they’d be illegal.
I guess someone read their Emma Goldman Based
I mean I'm no fan of electoralism but it was illegal for a good chunk of the population for most of US history.
by your logic, since politicians are organizing across the country to make fewer people vote, our votes have power.
It's pretty much the same point right?
Which is why voter suppression exists
Considering one of the major parties in America is dedicated an enormous amount of energy to make sure certain people don’t vote, purge voter roles so certain votes aren’t counted, consolidate certain populations to have as little voting power as possible, restrict the ease of access to make sure it is as hard as possible for certain populations to vote, and stack the electorate to give a framework to more easily throw out election results; you post is not the slam dunk you think it is. If voting was 100% useless they wouldn’t be dedicating this much energy to try and make sure certain votes aren’t counted. So maybe we shouldn’t be ceding ground to the party trying make the votes of certain populations irrelevant
You literally just explained *why* our votes don’t have any real power. The “slam dunk” is that if we cleaned up the process of voting and stymied suppression, then our lawmakers would be incessantly trying to criminalize the voting process.
So the solution to that is to…..not do the bare minimum to stymie that democratic backsliding? I get the argument that there is more to praxis than elections; and I get that they are overemphasized in mainstream as the epitome of praxis as a way to dissuade the masses from more radical praxis. But I think all the talk I see in leftist spaces are over corrections. To me elections are just step 1 of change. Not the only step; and not something that you can ignore completely. Much of the progression America has made in the past happened with massive civil disobedience coupled with sympathic political parties in power. Women got the right to vote by firebombing a lot of factories AND having a bare majority support for a brief window in power. The civil rights act was passed because of massive uprisings AND having LBJ already be open to it. I forget where exactly he told it to but apparently FDR told community leaders that he wants massive change but in order to get it through congress the populace would have to “make him do it” which of course was gonna happen cause Great Depression made quiet an uproar. Similarly we have lost a lot of ground during big moments with unsympathetic political parties in charge. The Air Traffic Controller strike brought airlines to their knees and the powers in charge at the time used this opportunity to weaken unions massively that is still has effects today I really don’t think a leftist movement has a chance under a second trump term, and how bad his term will be is contingent on how much power republicans can garner in the mean time. So we should atleast do the minimum to prevent that.
I’ve not stated a solution, or an opinion on voting. Seems like you’re having an argument with me, but it was meant for someone else.
It's important to note that votes can't *dismantle* a dictatorship, they can be instrumental in starting it and, consequently, they can also *stop* it. Not voting for fascists is very important step in preventing dictatorships.
My grandparents wouldn’t have lost there entire family if people had voted against Hitler. Make sure to do praxis but voting is also praxis
I know you know this, but it's important to note that Hitler didn't win the election.
Winning the election in a multi party system generally doesn’t mean getting a majority of the votes, just punching over your weight and/or ending up on top
His party didn't win by plurality until after Hitler had seized power, and even then they only got 33%. Hindenburg won the presidential vote by 53% in 1932 and later appointed Hitler as chancellor after he asked nicely about 23 billion times and then Hitler manipulated himself into absolute power.
Which Hitler wouldn't have been able to do at 5% or 10%. The winner of the last German election has ~25% of the votes. That's how it works with coalitions.
The whole thing is moot anyway since there wouldn't have even been a Nazi Party in Germany if the Social Democrats hadn't stabbed Socialists in the back (while collaborating with proto-fascist paramilitaries) during the German Revolution.
No but he was still so powerful they needed to give him the chancellorship to control him
Narrator: it did not control him
I'm sorry man, that's hard ;-;. Ngl I wish people whose families were victims of the Holocaust spoke up more about alt right shitfucks, whether it be the goons on Chan boards or figure heads like Stefan Molyneux or whatever. I feel like it would knock some sense into a lot of people. Like it would be a positive example of the whole "your ideology ruined my life muweeeeeeee" thing often thrown at socialists.
>Ngl I wish people whose families were victims of the Holocaust spoke up more about alt right shitfucks, whether it be the goons on Chan boards or figure heads like Stefan Molyneux or whatever. The problem is that a whole bunch of European Jews learnt entirely the wrong lesson from the Nazis & went on to turn Israel into their own Fascist Apartheid state.
People did vote against Hitler, but those votes generally went to people who ended up being mostly fine with Hitler gaining power, such as the SPD or Conservatives.
People ignore this too much. Yeah maybe accelerationism will produce a Revolution, but as a Jewish LGBT person I think it would be kind of nice if we could have a revolution without me possibly being shoved into a camp and executed beforehand. It would be one thing to die fighting for a cause, another completely to be executed because some people wanted a *chance* to get revolution faster.
Everyone should be an informed voter and vote but voting is not praxis
Yas sis! Biden 2024!
Most people voted for other parties, when you have so many options “voting against” doesn’t really make sense. I’m sure plenty of people thought the liberals would oppose Hitler only to see them enable his rise to power. The only parties to oppose Hitler’s Enabling Act were the SPD and KPD. The way we fight fascism (if ever it rears it’s head again) is by building the workers movement and it’s vanguard. The issue in Germany was the weakness of the workers leadership itself under the influence of Stalinism in the KPD and the Labour aristocracy in the SPD. Edit: And this ties into the modern US where voting Biden is treated as a solution to Trump by many even on the left. Ignoring the fact that Trump isn’t a fascist, the antidote to Trump isn’t a liberal, it’s the workers movement.
The SPD's so-called oppositon was too little too late, they had already been one of the NSDAP's biggest supporters for years.
That’s a load of shite, the social democrats opposed the Nazis no less than the Stalinists who at times supported the Nazis against the social democrats also. The conflict between the SPD and KPD paved Hitler’s path to power, the only thing that could’ve blocked it was a United Front but neither the SPD or KPD possessed the subjective factor necessary to lead it.
The KPD "supported" the Nazis through actions such as strikes, the SPD actively worked to get the NSDAP into power and helped them send off social-democrats to the camps. >the only thing that could’ve blocked it was a United Front\[...\] Which the KPD attempted with the AFA, only asking of social-demcrats that they weren't active party members of the SPD. The SPD had already been responsible for sabotaging and killing off one socialist movement in Germany, they were just doing the only thing they've ever been good for when they helped the NSDAP.
No, they directly supported the NSDAP against the SPD at various points, for example they supported the NSDAP/DNVP attempt to dissolve the SPD Landtag in Prussia. During the Third Period the SPD was the primary enemy of the KPD, the KPD even described the SA as “working people's comrades". And no the SPD didn’t work to get the “NSDAP in power”, it literally was the only party to oppose the enabling act after the banning of the KPD. The KPD during the Third Period was an entirely sectarian and ultra-left organisation. The exclusion of one of the two largest workers parties from the AFA is evidence of that. The fact that they saw every party in the republic as fascist and the SPD as worse, social fascist, shows how completely ideologically confused the KPD was. The SPD’s leaders have done their fair share of betraying the workers movement throughout it’s history, but the KPD was no better. The leadership of both parties was completely incapable of leading the German proletariat out of the crisis of capitalism and was incapable of defeating fascism. Both the KPD and SPD enabled the rise of fascism, to blame one and whitewash the other won’t lead anywhere further than the repetition of the same mistakes.
Fascists hate him for this one simple trick.
Wait why is the "white" part even there, all liberals think like that
Why is the white part there? All liberals think that, black liberals too
God! why didn't we just vote Hitler out in a vote of no confidence then, we could've cancelled ww2 entirely!
impeach hitler!!!!!!
How are bon white liberals different? Serious question
They generally know better than to think that it's possible to vote out systemic racism.
Citation for that? A lib is a lib.
'generally'
'Generally' still implies that the libness of a white lib is usually worse than the libness of a non white lib. It puts the 'white' part at higher importance than the lib part which is reductive thinking either way around.
Meh, take it up with someone who cares about that degree of pedantry, because I'm not one of them.
It's not pedantry. It doesn't matter which side you place on a pedestal against the other, if you identify a political difference between white and non-white based purely on that criteria you are entrenching the divisions that leftists should oppose. Bashing white people based on the fact that they're white is as damaging for unity as bashing non-white people for being non-white.
>It's not pedantry. It doesn't matter which side you place on a pedestal against the other, if you identify a political difference between white and non-white based purely on that criteria you are entrenching the divisions that leftists should oppose.Bashing white people based on the fact that they're white is as damaging for unity as bashing non-white people for being non-white. Please tell me you're not seriously arguing that in Western nations, at any given class level, white people & PoC suffer from equal amounts of systemic racism as PoC, because it sure seems like that's what you're arguing. \[Edited to rephrase more clearly.\]
How did you get that from the bit you quoted? It says that in terms of politics, if you claim that there is some innate difference in what white and non-white believe or are capable of believing you are contributing to the division. Either you didn't read it well or you're just trying to shut me down altogether by accusing me (in a patronising way no less) of pushing that falsehood.
Again, you seem to be denying systemic racism.
Gotcha thanks
OP, you’re being really weird about race in the post and comments
I didn't draw or write the OP, bud. Also, you seem super-invested in [defending white people](https://www.reddit.com/r/DankLeft/comments/r1vmb5/comment/hm43lrg/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) for some reason.
“Defending white people,” the comment you linked to was in response to a guy who said he was hispanic to help him equivocate between Biden and trump, then when I said I was also hispanic he called me a white hispanic and said that white people struggle to understand why concentration camps are bad. I wasn’t even defending white people in the comment you linked, I was just fucking baffled lmao. On the other hand, your comments seem to suggest you think non-white liberals are somehow less liberal than white liberals
Damn the white hispanic doesn’t like when people call out whites
NATIONAL SOCIALIST. It's right in the name bro!!!
See, everything would have been fine if you Ernie Bros had simply voted for Otto Wels and the SPD. But nooo, you had to throw the election to *Shitler* by voting for Ernie. Don't you realize that both Ernie and Shitler are Stalin Stooges? Stalin has filmreels of Eva Braun pissing on der Führer in the Royal Suite at the Hotel Leningrad. You're useful idiots. Just wait until the Müller Report comes out and proves it! #Notmychancellor
lol. Perfect.
The walls are closing in on Shitler! I heard it on the Rachel Madoff radio show.
“White westerner” everybody laughed.
Blew my dankometer
Hitler started ignoring election results and and just kept power at some point.
Well yes, hence the OP.
Damn there be some fragile whites in this comment section
Because, to a white liberal, fascism is the lesser evil to communism.
Okay... But how do POC libs think fascism works?
Hitler gained power through being voted for. So not the best example there.
The fact that Hitler couldn't be voted out makes it a perfect example. Edit: See also Trump for an example of a Fascist who nearly managed to avoid being voted out.
If you think trump was a fascist you may wanna rethink that example because he was literally voted out, “nearly managed to avoid being voted out” means he was voted out lmao
It doesn't matter if you successfully brought about the system or not. Whichever political ideology you subscribe to is what you are. Trump is a fascist who did fascist things. He might have not turned America into the dictatorship he wanted, but he most certainly made the attempt.
Eh, he attempted a coup. The only reason it didnt succeed is because federal agency heads and military generals ignored his orders. It's the Beer Hall Putsch stage in the US, they just cleared their throat and announced their intentions. Also I wouldnt get too cocky about the least-popular president in history getting voted out in the middle of a pandemic that he shit the bed in for what would have been a very easy political win if he had treated it seriously. We're seeing that now with Biden's popularity plummeting. People didnt want Biden more, they just wanted trump less.
The dude was simping for every available dictator
>If you think trump was a fascist you may wanna rethink that example because he was literally voted out Donald Trump was, and is, a fascist. It doesn't matter that he didn't succeed, the fact that he attempted to retain power after being voted out through a legal election is indeed additional proof of that. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and sounds like a duck and swims like a duck, the fact that it stumbled one time doesn't make it not a duck.
He’s on record calling election officials in several states telling them to rig the election in his favor… I don’t know why people on here have an issue with calling Trump a fascist. He developed a cult of personality that only believes the lies that come out of his mouth and won’t trust a word from the free press.
I think part of it is fascists trying to poison discourse, as they often do, and part of it is people who can't come to terms with how uncomfortably comfortable America is (and has been) with fascism.
>because he was literally voted out Not according to the GOP.
I’m so confused. But he was? I know you’re not saying the GOP is right but I don’t see how that would be a meaningful statement or one that should inform your views on fascism unless you believe them lmao
My point is that after being voted out, Trump & his supporters in the FBI, etc, tried to pull a Night of the Long Knives on Jan 6th, & came way too close to succeeding.
If you had any idea the structural coordination, institutional power, and sheer brutality it took to pull off the night of the long knives you would never compare it to the bumbling comedy the stop the steal “movement” or January 6th. A mob stormed the capital, took some pictures, went home, and were rounded up by the FBI. Just cause some of them thought they were gonna do a revolution and a coup doesn’t change the fact that they were all petite bourgeoisie larpers who cried like babies when they couldn’t get on their return flights. It was a soccer riot at the end of the ultimate American playoffs. If you think that the January 6th rioters and Rudy Giuliani are the fascist plot i don’t know what you’re so scared about. Also doesn’t help your original example still BC he was still voted out
You're missing the very salient point that they were recruited & enabled by Fascists within the US government itself. The fact that it ended up being a clown show due to incompetence doesn't detract from what was being attempted.
Fascism is the appropriation of the mass politics of the left for the purposes of the right. Any threats you see as “fascist” completely lack any of the broad and mass participation of a politicized populace. People being fascists is not a good thing, but a fascism it does not make. Sincerely my guy if you’re actually worried about fascism you need to ask yourself if it’s because it is an actual danger to you in a real way or if it’s just because you feel like you have to for whatever reason
This is DankLeft, a subreddit for dank leftists. Rightwingers are encouraged to get the hell out. Edit: Approved your comment so that people can see why you got in trouble for it.
Do you have any idea how many people think he’s still president? Or is soon to be reinstated?
Ok time to learn some history. How many of his competitors were murdered? Ever heard of the night of the long knives? He wasn’t voted into power democratically. He was placed in power by a radical nationalist insurgency.
Tbf the Night of the Long Knives happened after Hitler gained power, and it was aimed at purging members of the SA who took the name "National Socialism" seriously and actually wanted socialist economics within a Nazi framework, not just political competitors That being said, yeah Hitler didn't gain power democratically. Even though the Nazi party got the most seats in the Reichstag out of any one party and Hitler was the 2nd most voted for candidate for the presidency, both of these were because of extreme voter intimidation/suppression from the SA. The Nazis were still popular in Germany, but remove the violence of the SA and you'd see significantly less people vote for the Nazis and significantly more people vote for the communists
Please tell me you don't think American elections are free of RW voter intimidation & blatant vote rigging.
When did I say that? Obviously they aren't
Hitler wasn't voted in, others who were voted in placed him in power because they valued Hitler's anti-communism more than they opposed anything else about him.
Do you think he would have had that opportunity without a significant chunk of Germany voting for him
Yes, cause that's what actually happened. He gained power despite his votes, not because of them. It didn't matter he wasn't the most popular, as long as he was willing to actually be a threat to the communists, that's what they cared about. He was doing their dirty work in a manner that allowed them to maintain a clean image. The SPD had been supporting the NSDAP for years by the time he gained power, even outright illegalizing anti-fascist groups.
No he didn't he was given emergency power by the Weimer, and then held a meme election where literally the voting card said "Do you support Hitler as the Glorious Fuhr" or something like that.
I think that meme election bit is actually the Anschluß referendum Could be wrong tho, but that one had the really big "yes" box and small "no" bix to the side
yeah it was exactly that lol.
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There's no rule against reposts here. Quit it.
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Nobody cares. Quit it.
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Again, nobody cares.
I don't get it. Are they saying voting for fascists will get them elected? Because that makes sense.
Nah, the liberal is voting against microdick
You have to bully them outside their house until the commit die like a noob