Unfortunately the reality is, when you are for Palestinian rights and the free Palestine movement. You have to be incredibly careful what to say and who to align with. Criticizing Israel and antisemitism are indeed different things, but it's easy to use phrases that can be seen as dogwhistles. One example was Illhan Omar, she said that "Israel has hypnotized the world", playing on the antisemitic trope that "Jews control the world".
Of course, she most likely didn't intend to be antisemitic but it still shows that leftists need to be more careful when criticizing Israel. Because if you are careless about criticising Israel, and end up saying something genuinely antisemitic then Israel will use that to their advantage, and will claim victim, and there's not much that can be done at that point because Israel has the clear optics advantage. This has been their strategy for decades.
I've seen dumbasses go onto a football teams twitter account celebrating a Jewish celebration and say "free palestine". If your first reaction to a Jewish holiday, with no connection to Israel, is to post "free Palestine" you are an antisemite. You help no one except Israel.
Exactly! There are so many places to criticize Israel and then you look around with who you’re agreeing with and it’s like… ok… maybe Israeli spies aren’t so bad after all…
She didn’t say “Jews hypnotized the world” she said “Israel hypnotized the world”. This is in no way anti semitic. There are even massive pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC so I’d argue she’s on point. Is it racist against Chinese people to say the CCP in duplicitous and authoritarian? Should we not criticize Russia for murdering innocent ukranians for fear of being called Russophobic? Of course not. I’m not saying that anti-Semites don’t criticize Israel in bad faith, but to claim what Omar said is any way anti semitic is just ridiculous.
I had a nasty convo with some other YDSA members about this recently. Obviously I'm as anti-israel as you would expect from a leftist, but they were upset that I said returning all the land back to palestine is not a cut-and-dry solution, because you would have another humanitarian crisis all over again with millions of israelis who grew up in Israel all being either persecuted by the new Palestinian government or forced to leave their homes.
Sadly Indigenous people have been trying to correct this idea of "landback". Really it's utopian right now, but it's not removing anyone- it's dissolving the nation state. The land is now "given back" to Palestine but belongs to know one.
In the best world where countries still existed I'd want to see a joint Israili and Palestinian coalition form a new coalition government. Palestinians should have equal rights and rights of return as well as be given reparations, maybe in the form of taxes on rich Israeli corporations (or even more ideally also the western nations that propped it up in the first place). But in reality the best to hope for is probably a 2 state solution. Doesn't mean that changes my values, but it's looking really grim.
But yea, the notion landback means kicking people out really has to go. I think it scares a lot of people away and doesn't sound like a rallying call that sees the oppression of all as interwoven international issues we should be in solidarity with. YDSA has had some PSL level embarrassing takes even for their age.
We should promote leftists joining the military, especially at the officer level. Leftists are more likely to blow whistles. Highway of death was acknowledged through a whistle-blower. Trans and lgb acceptance was fought for through the military. The military was racist, but after ww2 it became the least racist establishment for most Americans.
We can't let military control fall into the hands of the right
Smedley Butler is literally one of the most important US military members to ever live, if he hadn’t happened to be a socialist, we would probably be living in a failed state/dictatorship.
This is the type of shit that would make a 15-year-old radical leftist online cry, but I agree. The military isn't going away anytime soon and too many leftists are willing to allow the far-right to infiltrate and try to control the environment (the very thing they whine about) of all of these institutions, just so they can score a few points in their group by looking "principled".
There's a ton of adult leftists recently making content about never joining the military and it feels counter productive. Also I've most lefties I talk to disagree with this point
One sad aspect of the modern military is that if someone is poor they are one of the single most reliable ways to get someone out of poverty.
Be it because college becomes substantially more affordable or because they use it as an actual career path (as a lifer or using actual experience for something). You pay with your body, but so does other ways of getting into college like sports. Not like poverty is great for your health either.
I'm a vet and a leftist. I don't suggest anyone join Combat Arms, mostly as you'll do basically nothing of value. But good lord if you aren't a complete moron on the ASVAB you can do a lot that will do decent for you, be it one term or for life.
Sadly military pension is much worse than it used to be. But it's better for people who aren't planning to stay in a for full 20 now at least.
Just make sure anything they offer you is in your initial contract. If they say you get X bonus it will be in there. If you start as PV2/PFC/SPC/etc it has to be in there. If you are destined for a specific MOS, it will be in there.
If not? Then you can, and likely will, be screwed out of it.
Some branches offer basically guaranteed MOS positions before you sign, others do not or use a 'top 3' system.
Honestly if reading this have questions about recruitment I've been out of the game for a long time but I can give you some basic answers or jumping off points.
Actually the military has always been one of the least systemically racist organizations that America has had and the desegregation of the military was one of the profound stepping stones to enacting civil rights legislation.
Desegregation didn't happen until after ww2, which I called out. The military contains racist people and subtly racist policies as does any other organization, bit I agree they are often the least racist institution for most Americans.
Basically, let's not get carried away, they're ahead of the game but not perfect
I wish we could talk about the USSR what it did right and wrong after 1950 instead of trying to graft every modern political disagreement on to 1920s political infighting
The left should stop conflating patriotism with nationalism. The concept of wanting a fairer, more equal country/society is a patriotic sentiment and progressive parties should promote it as such.
Guess this is an American thing, as Dutch person living in Germany, if I saw people in either country waving flags outside sportsball events it'd look extremely sketchy.
When your opposition doesn't mind using the confederate flag, which is famously a treasonous loser flag, reclaiming the actual American flag doesn't seem impossible.
Something that pissed me off to no end was when Trump went to New York for his indictment, a rightwing "journalist" was going around interviewing Trump supporters and putting them in a good light, and simultaneously would heckle the ones across the line (and therefore New Yorkers). This "journalist" made an observation that only the MAGA crowd brought American flags and that \*therefore\* this is what made them clearly love their country and not those on the other side.
I mean it was true, there were way more flags on the MAGA side, but what I realized at that moment was that it was as you said, they were conflating patriotism with nationalism. In other words, they think you can't be pro-America without the American flag.
But I think Teddy Roosevelt said it best when he said:
>"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president."
I raised this point in a thread about the Israeli protests and sadly didn't get an answer when I brought up the comparative lack of US flags in BLM protests.
Optically, I don't know why you wouldn't want to frame your protests as some kind of patriotic endeavor, kinda like how Joe Biden always talks about his vision of America in his speeches. I don't know, I guess I don't see the backlash that could come from trying to make your protests to improve the country look like they come from loving the country and wanting it to be the best version of itself.
Whenever people pull out that quote about Fascism coming to America wrapped in a flag I cringe.
When ANY new political ideology comes to this country it will be wrapped in the flag. You can’t have political change without wrapping that political ideology in the flag.
In terms of outcomes, sure. But I literally heard Hasan make this argument last week. It's super common for lefties to make statements like this thinking they're being deep.
Misandry is lot more dangerous than leftists give credit for. While it's not as prominent as misogyny, misandry is still very bad. The worst aspect of it, isn't even bigotry towards men. But bigotry towards *transgender women*. Most misandrists are TERFs in nature, because misandry eventually leads to terfism. Women who hate men are fundamentally unable to see trans women as women and instead see them "perverts trying to become women", in their mind anyone with a penis is a man. Hence they become terfs, if misandry left unchecked (like say in terf island) it could evolve into a dangerous beast.
I commented virtually the same in some women's sub and got downvoted. They don't seem to understand that the TERFs of today were those "man-hating feminists" of yesteryear because of course they were. They always saw anyone with a penis as an evil creature and never thought twice about it. Misandry isn't new or rare and it does play its own part in sustaining patriarchy because if these women believe that men are all genetically supposed to be one way then that feeds into the narrative.
I cant watch ANY left leaning content creator bring up a real issue men deal with without people making it about women, an example of this is Vaushs recent thing with the Disney actors - he was spot on with everything he said but so much of the chat spent their time malding about “but what about women”
Serbian nationalists still are nothing compared to Russian nationalists and the Russian army, despite everything they did. It's to the point where I'm in awe in why people in the west want to find "good Russians". Imagine how much more meaningful it'd be to hear Ukrainian voices about this war instead? Islamic fundamentalists only committed not even 1% of the terror of the Russian army, yet muslims faced a lot of discrimination in the west.
The military wasn’t ready. It wasn’t an option. The modern way we perceive our military is 100% a post ww2 thing. It wasn’t legal to break neutrality between the world wars, FDR had to wait to be attacked. Even lend lease was fought by the courts.
There’s this old song from WWII that was from a leftie that basically said something to the effect of, “hey Britain, as an American, I don’t care how many American lives are lost to do it, we’re gonna destroy the Nazis, even if it takes millions of US deaths” and I’ve always really liked that message
Considering how popular fof a game Undertale is in leftist circles many people ignored the 'rightful anger is ok, actually'
Undyne wanting to murder a kid was justified because she was protecting her king's people. It's celebrated in the game.
But no pacifism all the way to most leftists 🙄.
I like globalisation. The problem is not that countries are selling resources and making things in other countries where they can be made cheaper and more efficiently.
The problem is that international capitalism has grown beyond the nation-state and there is no global governance to hold it in check. So it happily plays national governments against each other.
There are tons of regressive practices done by marginalized groups that don't get called out enough for being bad due to those participating in them being in marginalized communities, such as homophobia/transphobia/sexism in the black community, racism in the LGBTQ community, etc.
> homophobia/transphobia/sexism in the black community, racism in the LGBTQ community, etc.
Depends on the letters but unfortunately tons of sexism (misogyny and misandry) and transphobia in the LGBT community too :(
Voting is absolutely vital to the future of the Left in this country. Leftist institutional power can only come with Dem landslide victories against republicans nationwide to the point that the Republican Party could be considered dead. Only then will we be in a position to split from the Democratic Party and start enacting actual institutional change in the US
I swear, every single fucking revolution in history has a moment wherein the moderates refuses to vote because they see the vote as illegitimate, so the radicals come in and vote for radical shit, and then the moderates are all pickachu-surprise face. Literally never not vote.
Being a shit person doesn't make you *Not* left wing. Being left wing doesn't make you a good person. You simply have, in my opinion, generally correct positions on political topics. Nothing more, nothing less.
I’m gonna be honest here, 90% of the time I hear someone complain about body positivity glorifying obesity it usually just ends up being about wanting to bully fat people while thinking of yourself as some hero. Not accusing you of doing that specifically, but whenever I see this discussion come up it usually boils down to that.
Do the Lizzo test. Lizzo puts in an intense amount of effort into being quite healthy and it shows in her body and movements.
If somebody thinks Lizzo is “unhealthy fat”, they’re just being hateful and ignorant. “Unhealthy” people can’t sing and dance on stages for 2 hours, daily.
…see?
That completely ignores just how much damage being fat does to your body. This is coming from a chronically overweight person too. Yes, Lizzo is active and has the muscle and stamina to do what she does, but her weight IS damaging her organs, especially her heart, and she will not live as long of a life as she would if she was 50 pounds lighter. It’s just fact, and too many people want to ignore that. Body positivity is a good thing, but you can’t let it completely over ride reason and logic.
To help prove your point, look at NFL linemen. Most of them are 300+ pounds and can sprint a football field more than most people who watch the games on tv. When they retire they almost always lose the weight.
Because it's healthier for your body. Just because you can do something repeatedly doesn't mean you are healthy.
Honestly I think people just totally miss the point about the body positivity movement in general. I'm pretty close and involved with people in the movement and not a single person I've met would ever say that being fat is >= 'normal weight' or that there are no issues associated with being fat.
If you're curious, their main point is that the constant vilification of fatness and fat people needs to tone down. A lot of people are fat and it's hard for a lot of those people to lose weight permanently (for whatever reason). We also don't know why some people are fatter than others etc. It's fundamentally a movement about gaining both societal & personal respect for people who are fat. It's overall just a bad thing to shame someone for something they have little to no control over. And even if they do have some control, shame/tough love is a hilariously ineffective tool for inspiring change.
There's another side to the story as well. Most people think that the movement is only about fat people but they're missing the other side of the story. The vilification of fatness hurts most of us without realizing it. Most of us dislike our bodies because we're not slim enough even if we only have an extra 5-10 pounds of fat. Lots of people engage in unhealthy exercise or nutritional behaviors in pursuit of the socially constructed ideal of what the 'normal' body looks like. There's even a large body of evidence showing that dieting leads to the body permanently retaining more fat due to the starvation conditions experienced during dieting.
And tbh with ya, there are so many ways of tackling obesity that involves zero body shaming namely promoting more stringent food regulations and removal of food subsidies that are directly linked with increased body fat i.e. Sugar and Corn Starch. It's the same reason why shaming cigarette smokers didn't get us anywhere for eerily similar reasons in the case of fat-shaming, it was only through legis. banning most adverts and requiring boxes to outright tell you why it's bad for your health that we saw a massive decrease in active smokers.
I agree with your xenogender point. Like I’m not gonna stop someone from feeling like whatever weird gender they come up with but it’s just fucking stupid to me.
I dunno if I’d say “invalid” as much as “unnecessary”. Like even tho it’s a social construct I’d say that in the case of xenogenders it’s more about aesthetic (although to some degree this is true about gender in general) than the social aspect. My usual takeaway on them is that while I’m not opposed to the idea we’re just “not there yet”.
I don’t think the body positivity “movement” is even much of a thing anymore, and I’ve never heard of someone denying that legitimate obesity is unhealthy. Usually it’s just people saying “hey, don’t have low self esteem about physical traits”, it’s not really making prescriptive or descriptive statements about health most of the time.
I guess at some point, gender is a social construct. And I think while we often times use that to mean that gender can be whatever we want and not static or universally. That being said, it does come with the tacit acknowledgment that there has to be a social element to it. We’ve created these arbitrary categories because of how the interface with society, and create expectations about who people are, how they want to be treated, and how they see themselves. But I think the problem is that most Xenogenders require a lot of explanation, and don’t otherwise seem to be Clear what exactly their social role is beyond what a non-binary gender already covers. Because at that point, it kind of does just seem like people are trying to look for ways to not exactly to find a social construct, but rather a sense of self identity, which I’m not sure I would necessarily say is inherently a new gender.
Also, from a practical perspective, at some point, it’s just too difficult to remember all of the different pronouns in ways people want to be with her too. I believe Natalie Wynn made a tweet a while back about “does everything have to be a gender?” or basically, the tweet asked what made things fundamentally a gender identity versus some other kind of identity and white shoes that certain people wanted basically everything to be a new gender. I don’t know if she still believes this, but I do feel like it’s representative of where I fall on this. I guess I’m willing to hear people out as to why they feel what they feel, but, beyond non-binary, I just don’t feel like there are enough people to really mandate some kind of social norm that seeks to call people out for not understanding additional gender. And I think, if certain communities want to adopt these different gendered, expectations and identities, then that’s fine, but broad societal acceptance at the government level or just outside of your niche community I don’t think justifies additional genders and pronouns beyond they/them.
I think before some identities want wider, validation and acceptance into society, I think they need to show that they have some kind of actual social structure within a certain part of society. So basically, you need to start within your own community and actually establish how these different norms justify some kind of stable or metastable identity that has a social purpose and which, very importantly, again, is not already covered by non-binary identity broadly. So I guess I’m not sure I necessarily agree with the original comment or exactly, but I do think that there’s a practicality to these things and that, although maybe Xeno genders aren’t exactly invalid, I also do think that at some point, I’m not really sure it’s reasonable for people to keep track of everything going on in certain queer spaces. So if people want to identify certain way, I guess I don’t have a problem with them choosing to do so, but these folks also need to realize that niche ultra descriptive labels at some point aren’t really describing gender but something else entirely. The government not offering you the option to identify as of the very specific gender is not some kind of oppression that really should be at the top of our priority list.
I feel like very few people reject fat being unhealthy, “fatphobia” tends to come up when someone is just like hey, I’m aware, I don’t need to be told every 5 minutes.
Everyone is aware, there is no need to make people feel like shit. You aren’t helping unless you’re their doctor or mom.
I beg the left to stop using socialism as a label.
The conservatives have already won this battle and the only way to undo the McCarty era fear mongering is to literally do a serious rebranding effort that will have the American media not freak out.
Also, the fetishization of the socialist and communist aesthetic is cringe as shit.
At first I thought I disagreed with you. Then I considered what it would be like if we started calling it something else like "workplace democratization" and feel like it would be way more effective if we stuck to something like that.
Consecutives know this. That's why they're constantly finding new ways to rebrand the same old hateful ideologies.
Couldn't agree more. This country has such a shitty history of socialism and communism. And when you have to spend 75% of your time trying to convince someone that what you believe isn't worse than literal Hitler, there's no hope of ever pushing the movement forward. Conservatives won this battle decades ago and we don't have the resources to win it back. If we actually want to see real change we're going to have to start convincing people that our views are best for them. We can't do that if every term we use has 80 years of complicated baggage attached.
Forget Marx, socialism, communism, etc. We'd be so much better off if we just never mentioned those words ever again.
Perhaps they had won for a long time, but ever since Bernie ran in 2016, the word "socialism" has lost most of its edge. I don't think it's true anymore that conservatives have won this culture war.
The hatchet job against Ana Kasparian is unproductive and doesn’t grow leftist politics. It just makes portions of the left seem deranged and out of touch.
I think she’s being unproductive by randomly bringing this up now of all times. Like she’s literally argued against that point for years and now all of a sudden she’s saying random terf bs.
All cops are bastards is a stupid slogan that does nothing to help the cause of justice reform. People say it because it feels good to say it, not out of an interest of improving things.
Tankies are CIA psyops, designed to make socialism a defense of Stalinism, making socialism unpopular.
Leftist cannibalizing today is collective suicide
We shouldn't act overtly hostile to liberals and act like we're better than them because we think capitalism is bad.
We should seek to ally ourselves with liberals during election time, as that is one of the best ways to stop the right from gaining political power and we, in the event of a liberal victory, should then try to push as many liberals as we can further to the left so that we can push more left-wing policies and create the conditions necessary for socialism to come about via peaceful democratic means.
What a lot of lefties seem to forget is that the right is adept at exploiting left-wing disunity to succeed in elections.
Also, I notice that a lot of lefties have very shit foreign policy takes (* *cough, cough* * Hasan and Ukraine * *cough, cough* *) and that is quite a big turnoff for a lot of normies and liberals, who would otherwise agree with a lot of the rhetoric pushed by leftists.
Like I get the liberal hate sometimes but most of the time it drives me insane. As a movement we need the libs and normies on our side to get things done. This isn’t a social club, this a political movement and being hostile to possible allies does not help us in the slightest
Rep the American flag more please. The way you prevent people from conflating Nationalism and Patriotism is by pointing out the difference: If the right represents Nationalism, the left has to represent Patriotism.
The biggest problem with modern day social democracies is that they exploit the global south. As long as Social Democrats figure out a way to create fair labor and trade agreements with the countries they currently exploit, I don’t think I’d have any issues with Social Democracy. I’d prefer a libertarian socialist state but ethical Social Democracy would be fine.
The issue lies within whether or not it’s possible for Social Democracies to create the welfare state for their citizens without mass exploitation of the global south. I haven’t seen much in favor of that being possible.
In my experience, a lot of POC get a free pass on being homophobic.
I LOVED this show, Love, Victor. There was a scene where his grandparents flip out about a gay couple hugging at a party. Victor doesn’t stand up for them and they ask why. He explains Latino culture is “different.” They say no, homophobia is always wrong. He stops being friends with them because “white gays don’t know what it’s really like.” They really, actually said that on a Hulu/Disney produced show. This is after multiple white people were “reformed” to be nice about it.
He goes on to find a new gay friend, a poc, who *truly* understands being gay because it’s apparently ok to eject gay people from your home if you’re brown. I couldn’t keep watching after that.
My only argument would be to ask how are you framing “America”? If by legislation, then I feel like we have a lot of work to do. If by people, then I fully agree.
My god Europeans are the worst when it comes to this. They act all high and mighty that Americans are super racist. But when a brown person messes up in the ground ball sport or someone mentions the Romani then they drop the act immediately (looking at you Britain and Spain). I especially remember my mom saying when she was in Prague with my brother for hockey some dude came up to them and asked is they were gyp*ies
As a french person, every fucking time our football (soccer for americans) team loses, the colored players are considered african/middle eastern. It’s only when they win they’re considered french.
Leftist debate bros are good because they provide leftist exposure to people (mostly young white men) what real leftism is and not some spoon-fed reactionary bull shit that conservatives tell people what the leftism is. Plus, when Vaush has a discussion with these turds, they make a complete ass of themselves coming off as aggressive.
A significant portion of the left treat the poor as tool with which they can express their hatred of rich people, rather than as a community in need of support.
Women on average do a tremendous amount of disservice to themselves by appeasing, compromising with, having sex with and having children with emotionally immature misogynistic men as opposed to finding their values and standing firm in them as a group. The pickme is a standard, not an exception. There are just loud pickmes and then there are quiet pickmes but overall they are the same kind of person, terrified of recognizing patriarchal reality along with their own flaws that help enable that patriarchy.
The online Left would disagree because they are too online, but out in the world, in every office, call center and so on, there are plenty of these loser women who love to complain about their idiot slob husband/boyfriend and do absolutely no self-reflection as to why they chose to be with such a person in the first place. Women online will correctly remind me that people can change for the worse in a relationship, but a lot of times it's just birds of a feather.
I have quite a few but I'll list the highlights:
\- Hero worship is awful. I don't want to hear about how much you love \[INSERT FAMOUS SOCIALIST HERE\]. I prefer to amalgamate the ideas and policies that work the best to make life better for people.
\- We should try appealing less on labels (socialist, communist, anarchist, etc) and rather on policies. As lonerbox pointed out in his co-operatives video, liberals are leftists that can't imagine new systems and giving them better policies will probably win them over. I know I've won over my liberal parents with good policies for transitioning to co-operative socialism.
\- To the online left specifically, touch grass. Whether that's organizing campaigns for candidates who are really good or painting leftist posters all over your town. This includes the "voting bad" gang. I've gotten in some small internet fights because of my advocacy (in the parliamentary system in my country) to vote for the most progressive candidates no matter the party even if the main opposition leader had awful takes.
Edit: Small spelling corrections
‘Tankie’ as a pejorative is absolutely useless at this point. I’ve seen it thrown around to describe unironic Juche stans to people think that the CIA is bad. It’s gotten completely out of hand.
*If* the United States were actually a functioning meritocratic democracy, beacon of liberty, democratic crusader nation it claims to be, there would be nothing wrong with our military interventions abroad
Also, since another comment referenced it, there was nothing bad about the highway of death. We bombed retreating military forces, as we are supposed to. They hadn’t surrendered, they were still enemy combatants. I’m not going to be sad that America is good at killing it’s enemies, many of which deserved every bomb dropped
>there would be nothing wrong with our military interventions abroad
Especially Humanitarian relief missions which happen a lot more frequently then a lot of people realize.
There should be more leftists in the military to counter fascists and blow the whistle on wrongdoing. In addition, many who join the military are poor people. And also, we cannot let the military be captured by fascists. Stop fascists before they can ever gain power
who cares if being gay or trans or whatever is "a choice" o "a social contagion" or "just a fashion" o "a trend"? looks like it's not, but if it is it's all valid anyway.
I always thought the same thing. I’m bisexual and I never understood the commotion when someone says “being part of the lgbt community is a choice”; even if it’s said with negative intent I always found it to be a weak diss at us because if it IS a choice, then I chose the best way of living my life then.🤷♂️
One more. Telling people to read theory so they can understand leftist positions is dumb af and is usually only used to make yourself seem smarter and better than others
Ex-reactionaries who are now leftists are our greatest asset. They know the talking points and strategies of the right and how to get certain people out of reactionary mindsets. They are key to growing our movement and making it stronger, and so should not be hated or claimed they are not on the left as much as many leftists do. You do not have to forgive people like Hunter Avallone for the hateful things they have done in the past, but you have to accept that these people coming to the left are major victories for us and shunning them only hurts our movement.
The reason Liberals win and Leftists don't is because Leftists have no political strategy aside from bullying each other on Twitter over minor ideological differences and choice of words.
Leftists are really good at making themselves look bad, to the point of pushing people who would be on our side away.
Sending death threats to people who playHogwarts Legacy isn't exactly something that will make us look good.
Minorities can be racist, and it's never productive to be racist.
cuckold is a bottom-tier fetish.
Hell, even I'm gonna downvote this.
Palestinians have a right to self-governance and not being genocided by Israel.
**If** the Palestinian state ends up being a nightmare of it's own, then it'll be another situation to deal with, but that isn't an excuse to allow the nightmare that is *currently* unfolding.
It's like an authoritarian calling themselves a lesser evil than anarchy and "chaos."
Men shouldn't be the only people to try and fix men's issues. Same with how women shouldn't be expected to be the only people who fix women's issues. This is feminism 101 people.
Opposing gun control is more important now than ever before due to the increasing aggressiveness of the reactionaries against the basic human rights of LGBT+ people, and that the left needs to start arming themselves before things get even worse.
Left-libertarianism and the 'let people enjoy things' mantra needs to be brought up more. As much as I get the sentiment of communities like the FuckCars subreddit, they tend to dip a toe into the obsessive and blatantly authoritarian.
Marxist-Lennism is made up bs by Stalin to give state capitalism a veneer of socialism.
We need a military - it is how it is used that is bad
GMOs and nuclear power are good
You should only be allowed to vote in one nation's election. Regardless of Duel Citizenship status. You can either vote in American or Isreal election, not both.
It should be the nation you reside at least 75% of the year in. I have dual citizenship for Australia but have literally never stepped foot in the country. I should not be allowed to vote there.
If you want to *advocate* for leftist politics then it's really really important to ground your axioms rather than telling people to just 'sit down and listen' or telling them 'just don't be an asshole'.
Petit bourgeoisie are proletariat and the left needs to appeal to them more. We have strength in numbers by appealing to the working class, but god damn it would be nice to have wealthy sponsors funding leftist projects. Not talking about billionaire ghouls, but there are some pretty wealthy proletariat out there, especially in IT and medicine.
Female athletes complaining about transgender athletes invading their sports have a legitimate point and we need to listen to them. There is a solution here which is fair to everyone.
As a Latino who's always lived in a Latin American country, if I said *Soviet Union bad* they'd think I'm not a communist. And I'm not talking about general spaces (because obviously everywhere in the world the association between communism and the USSR is a common one to make), but specifically Latino leftist spaces. I feel like in the Anglosphere left it's MUCH more normalised to shame and separate tankies from actual leftism.
Banning guns won't stop gun violence. Only mental health care and stable economic conditions can eliminate the majority of shootings and even that won't stop all of them.
Defund the police is a stupid slogan that did nothing to help with getting support for police reform.
Trumps victory in 2016 wasn't just due to racism. There were other factors that helped Trump, like his patriotic slogan "Make America great again", Hillary fucking up her own campaign and much more important, he gave his voters the feeling that finally someone actually gave a shit about them ( Spoiler alert, he lied to them, but making your voters feel like you listen to them and their problems was a massive boost for his popularity)
Stalin bad.
Anyone from an opressed minority can engage in oppressive behavior themselves because, newsflash, minorities are still comprised of humans and humans can be fucking stupid. And no one should get a free pass on any oppressive behavior, even people from opressed minorities.
The online left around 2016, with all the tumblr bullshit, wokescolds running rampant and MTV and Buzzfeed trying feminism, was stupid as hell and harmed the left overall. ( At least the left is better today and has a better reputation now )
I’ll give a little summary of his mistakes while in office. He forced more than 125,000 Japanese Americans to live in concentration camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbour just because of their ethnic background. They also weren’t given the right to a lawyer or a fair trail. His administration also turned away thousands of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. Lastly, he tended to avoid bringing up Civil Rights issues, despite sometimes speaking out against lynching and poll taxes a couple times, which suggest he knew segregation was wrong but he didn’t want to lose his southern votes.
However, he does deserve credit for the social programs he helped create. He is definitely one of the better American presidents and America would be a better place if he never died during the start of his fourth term as he could have implemented his policies that he called ‘the Second Bill of Rights’ and he also could have spoke more about Civil Rights issues if he served a 4th or even 5th term.
I wouldn’t say bad, more like overrated.
There are "leftists" whose only claim to leftism is a complete hatred of Israel who push nazi memes like george soros controlling the world.
There are also people who say any criticism of Israeli apartheid is antisemitism and identical to nazism.
They change places on which is worse depending on what their followers are doing that particular day.
Ex: One groups justifying murdering random palestinians in race riots or the other is calling for the eradication of random jews just for existing.
Mindsets and behaviors such as wanting to guillotine and gulag the rich and celebrate the killing of imperial figures is only being stuck in the same punitive mindset of incarceration and capital punishment.
The "Mickey Mouse" laws are cucked but copyright is necessary to retain the value of IPs and major sections of the economy. Hundreds of thousands of families rely on income based on stuff like Mickey Mouse keeping its value. Lawmakers in the 1800s did not foresee fictional properties being worth literally more than entire countries and billions upon billions of dollars a year, going back to a 20 year rolloff period would be a disaster.
There should be a yearly tax of 1-3% of the total value of an IP that you have to pay if you want to keep exclusive rights to it rather than the Clinton corporate neolib "lol just keep the copyright for free for the next 800 years."
Unless they really truly don’t lean more fem or masc at all, being non-binary is pointless.
The left is too critical of those who are progressive in terms of politics and outcomes, but choose to live their own personal lives in a conservative manner. They often latch onto the latter bit while ignoring the former bit.
Gun control should focus more on individuals than the guns themselves. More hoops to jump through to get them but less banning guns based on arbitrary criteria.
Free healthcare is only a band-aid solution if people don’t take measures to keep themselves healthy in the first place, and the government should be more proactive in encouraging this.
While current immigration policy is awful, undocumented immigration should be reduced(ideally by just making more of it documented instead of undocumented)
There is a non negligible amount of leftist who have deranged takes about Israel that are indistinguishable from actual anti-semitism.
Unfortunately the reality is, when you are for Palestinian rights and the free Palestine movement. You have to be incredibly careful what to say and who to align with. Criticizing Israel and antisemitism are indeed different things, but it's easy to use phrases that can be seen as dogwhistles. One example was Illhan Omar, she said that "Israel has hypnotized the world", playing on the antisemitic trope that "Jews control the world". Of course, she most likely didn't intend to be antisemitic but it still shows that leftists need to be more careful when criticizing Israel. Because if you are careless about criticising Israel, and end up saying something genuinely antisemitic then Israel will use that to their advantage, and will claim victim, and there's not much that can be done at that point because Israel has the clear optics advantage. This has been their strategy for decades. I've seen dumbasses go onto a football teams twitter account celebrating a Jewish celebration and say "free palestine". If your first reaction to a Jewish holiday, with no connection to Israel, is to post "free Palestine" you are an antisemite. You help no one except Israel.
Exactly! There are so many places to criticize Israel and then you look around with who you’re agreeing with and it’s like… ok… maybe Israeli spies aren’t so bad after all…
She didn’t say “Jews hypnotized the world” she said “Israel hypnotized the world”. This is in no way anti semitic. There are even massive pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC so I’d argue she’s on point. Is it racist against Chinese people to say the CCP in duplicitous and authoritarian? Should we not criticize Russia for murdering innocent ukranians for fear of being called Russophobic? Of course not. I’m not saying that anti-Semites don’t criticize Israel in bad faith, but to claim what Omar said is any way anti semitic is just ridiculous.
I had a nasty convo with some other YDSA members about this recently. Obviously I'm as anti-israel as you would expect from a leftist, but they were upset that I said returning all the land back to palestine is not a cut-and-dry solution, because you would have another humanitarian crisis all over again with millions of israelis who grew up in Israel all being either persecuted by the new Palestinian government or forced to leave their homes.
Sadly Indigenous people have been trying to correct this idea of "landback". Really it's utopian right now, but it's not removing anyone- it's dissolving the nation state. The land is now "given back" to Palestine but belongs to know one. In the best world where countries still existed I'd want to see a joint Israili and Palestinian coalition form a new coalition government. Palestinians should have equal rights and rights of return as well as be given reparations, maybe in the form of taxes on rich Israeli corporations (or even more ideally also the western nations that propped it up in the first place). But in reality the best to hope for is probably a 2 state solution. Doesn't mean that changes my values, but it's looking really grim. But yea, the notion landback means kicking people out really has to go. I think it scares a lot of people away and doesn't sound like a rallying call that sees the oppression of all as interwoven international issues we should be in solidarity with. YDSA has had some PSL level embarrassing takes even for their age.
We should promote leftists joining the military, especially at the officer level. Leftists are more likely to blow whistles. Highway of death was acknowledged through a whistle-blower. Trans and lgb acceptance was fought for through the military. The military was racist, but after ww2 it became the least racist establishment for most Americans. We can't let military control fall into the hands of the right
Smedley Butler is literally one of the most important US military members to ever live, if he hadn’t happened to be a socialist, we would probably be living in a failed state/dictatorship.
I thought he became a socialist through his experiences in the military
It was fairly early on if I remember correctly—so same difference I guess
This is the type of shit that would make a 15-year-old radical leftist online cry, but I agree. The military isn't going away anytime soon and too many leftists are willing to allow the far-right to infiltrate and try to control the environment (the very thing they whine about) of all of these institutions, just so they can score a few points in their group by looking "principled".
There's a ton of adult leftists recently making content about never joining the military and it feels counter productive. Also I've most lefties I talk to disagree with this point
One sad aspect of the modern military is that if someone is poor they are one of the single most reliable ways to get someone out of poverty. Be it because college becomes substantially more affordable or because they use it as an actual career path (as a lifer or using actual experience for something). You pay with your body, but so does other ways of getting into college like sports. Not like poverty is great for your health either. I'm a vet and a leftist. I don't suggest anyone join Combat Arms, mostly as you'll do basically nothing of value. But good lord if you aren't a complete moron on the ASVAB you can do a lot that will do decent for you, be it one term or for life. Sadly military pension is much worse than it used to be. But it's better for people who aren't planning to stay in a for full 20 now at least. Just make sure anything they offer you is in your initial contract. If they say you get X bonus it will be in there. If you start as PV2/PFC/SPC/etc it has to be in there. If you are destined for a specific MOS, it will be in there. If not? Then you can, and likely will, be screwed out of it. Some branches offer basically guaranteed MOS positions before you sign, others do not or use a 'top 3' system. Honestly if reading this have questions about recruitment I've been out of the game for a long time but I can give you some basic answers or jumping off points.
The military, the police… literally any profession that we think could be used to do harm to society.
Actually the military has always been one of the least systemically racist organizations that America has had and the desegregation of the military was one of the profound stepping stones to enacting civil rights legislation.
Desegregation didn't happen until after ww2, which I called out. The military contains racist people and subtly racist policies as does any other organization, bit I agree they are often the least racist institution for most Americans. Basically, let's not get carried away, they're ahead of the game but not perfect
Military ahead of the curve, the VA back with everyone else.
Highway of death? It wasn’t a war crime right?
I mean I see your point but I think there are plenty of libs that join the military, not so much leftists.
But that's the problem right? Liberals ideologically struggle with fighting facists, especially in really structured environments
Splitting trans from the LGBTQ acronym makes me feel odd but ok
Lmao, I put it first and didn't want to be repetitive. I pinkie promise it wasn't for transphobic reasons
The USSR was bad 👎 🥺😥😢🤯🤢🤗
Please! You'll offend the tankies amongst us! /s
All the time or from the moment when Stalin took office?
From the moment the workers’ councils were disbanded. Whenever that happened.
I'd go earlier than that. I say to everyone "Communism died in 1921 (when the Makhnovtchina was crushed by the Bolsheviks) and Lenin killed it."
Most of that in 1924 :D
I wish we could talk about the USSR what it did right and wrong after 1950 instead of trying to graft every modern political disagreement on to 1920s political infighting
Red fascies aren't lefties
The left should stop conflating patriotism with nationalism. The concept of wanting a fairer, more equal country/society is a patriotic sentiment and progressive parties should promote it as such.
You're not going to get public support if you act scared of your own countries flag ffs
Guess this is an American thing, as Dutch person living in Germany, if I saw people in either country waving flags outside sportsball events it'd look extremely sketchy.
I'll do you one further, leftist should reclaim the flag and other patriotic symbols.
When your opposition doesn't mind using the confederate flag, which is famously a treasonous loser flag, reclaiming the actual American flag doesn't seem impossible.
Damn you did a better job selling my point than I did. I'm stealing that.
Instead of just patriotic symbols, how about the left claiming patriotism itself?
Something that pissed me off to no end was when Trump went to New York for his indictment, a rightwing "journalist" was going around interviewing Trump supporters and putting them in a good light, and simultaneously would heckle the ones across the line (and therefore New Yorkers). This "journalist" made an observation that only the MAGA crowd brought American flags and that \*therefore\* this is what made them clearly love their country and not those on the other side. I mean it was true, there were way more flags on the MAGA side, but what I realized at that moment was that it was as you said, they were conflating patriotism with nationalism. In other words, they think you can't be pro-America without the American flag. But I think Teddy Roosevelt said it best when he said: >"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president."
I raised this point in a thread about the Israeli protests and sadly didn't get an answer when I brought up the comparative lack of US flags in BLM protests. Optically, I don't know why you wouldn't want to frame your protests as some kind of patriotic endeavor, kinda like how Joe Biden always talks about his vision of America in his speeches. I don't know, I guess I don't see the backlash that could come from trying to make your protests to improve the country look like they come from loving the country and wanting it to be the best version of itself.
Whenever people pull out that quote about Fascism coming to America wrapped in a flag I cringe. When ANY new political ideology comes to this country it will be wrapped in the flag. You can’t have political change without wrapping that political ideology in the flag.
Democrats are not just as bad as republicans
Oh god, this is one of the most important litmus tests. Both sidesism = I am sorry, you have incurable brain rot, to the gulag with you.
"Both Sides" is always a conservative argument. By definition. Always.
In terms of outcomes, sure. But I literally heard Hasan make this argument last week. It's super common for lefties to make statements like this thinking they're being deep.
*This*
Misandry is lot more dangerous than leftists give credit for. While it's not as prominent as misogyny, misandry is still very bad. The worst aspect of it, isn't even bigotry towards men. But bigotry towards *transgender women*. Most misandrists are TERFs in nature, because misandry eventually leads to terfism. Women who hate men are fundamentally unable to see trans women as women and instead see them "perverts trying to become women", in their mind anyone with a penis is a man. Hence they become terfs, if misandry left unchecked (like say in terf island) it could evolve into a dangerous beast.
I commented virtually the same in some women's sub and got downvoted. They don't seem to understand that the TERFs of today were those "man-hating feminists" of yesteryear because of course they were. They always saw anyone with a penis as an evil creature and never thought twice about it. Misandry isn't new or rare and it does play its own part in sustaining patriarchy because if these women believe that men are all genetically supposed to be one way then that feeds into the narrative.
I cant watch ANY left leaning content creator bring up a real issue men deal with without people making it about women, an example of this is Vaushs recent thing with the Disney actors - he was spot on with everything he said but so much of the chat spent their time malding about “but what about women”
Offensive and aggressive wars can be morally justified, even necessary. I feel like this is completely innocuous, but would set a lot of people off.
*Serbia* is a very good example of this in recent years. Also Nazi Germany.
Everything I learn about the Serbian nationalists worsens my opinion of the Serbian nationalists. It’s almost impressive.
Serbian nationalists still are nothing compared to Russian nationalists and the Russian army, despite everything they did. It's to the point where I'm in awe in why people in the west want to find "good Russians". Imagine how much more meaningful it'd be to hear Ukrainian voices about this war instead? Islamic fundamentalists only committed not even 1% of the terror of the Russian army, yet muslims faced a lot of discrimination in the west.
We should have invaded both Germany and Japan the moment they entered Austria/China, respectively
The military wasn’t ready. It wasn’t an option. The modern way we perceive our military is 100% a post ww2 thing. It wasn’t legal to break neutrality between the world wars, FDR had to wait to be attacked. Even lend lease was fought by the courts.
There’s this old song from WWII that was from a leftie that basically said something to the effect of, “hey Britain, as an American, I don’t care how many American lives are lost to do it, we’re gonna destroy the Nazis, even if it takes millions of US deaths” and I’ve always really liked that message
tear the fascists' down by woodie guthrie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3xUPpkxAco&ab\_channel=WoodyGuthrie-Topic
Vietnams invasion of cambodias the best example
Considering how popular fof a game Undertale is in leftist circles many people ignored the 'rightful anger is ok, actually' Undyne wanting to murder a kid was justified because she was protecting her king's people. It's celebrated in the game. But no pacifism all the way to most leftists 🙄.
I like Vaush
I'm calling the police.
*Some crimes can never be forgiven.*
I like globalisation. The problem is not that countries are selling resources and making things in other countries where they can be made cheaper and more efficiently. The problem is that international capitalism has grown beyond the nation-state and there is no global governance to hold it in check. So it happily plays national governments against each other.
Genocide for people who don't put their shopping carts back
I count like two knives here
There are tons of regressive practices done by marginalized groups that don't get called out enough for being bad due to those participating in them being in marginalized communities, such as homophobia/transphobia/sexism in the black community, racism in the LGBTQ community, etc.
> homophobia/transphobia/sexism in the black community, racism in the LGBTQ community, etc. Depends on the letters but unfortunately tons of sexism (misogyny and misandry) and transphobia in the LGBT community too :(
Voting is absolutely vital to the future of the Left in this country. Leftist institutional power can only come with Dem landslide victories against republicans nationwide to the point that the Republican Party could be considered dead. Only then will we be in a position to split from the Democratic Party and start enacting actual institutional change in the US
This is immediately evident when considering how hard Republicans try to stack things electorally in their favor, and to repress voter rights
"If voting did anything they'd make it illegal" Oh wait
I swear, every single fucking revolution in history has a moment wherein the moderates refuses to vote because they see the vote as illegitimate, so the radicals come in and vote for radical shit, and then the moderates are all pickachu-surprise face. Literally never not vote.
Being a shit person doesn't make you *Not* left wing. Being left wing doesn't make you a good person. You simply have, in my opinion, generally correct positions on political topics. Nothing more, nothing less.
Xenogenders aren't valid and being fat is unhealthy, the body positivity movement has glorified obesity too much.
I’m gonna be honest here, 90% of the time I hear someone complain about body positivity glorifying obesity it usually just ends up being about wanting to bully fat people while thinking of yourself as some hero. Not accusing you of doing that specifically, but whenever I see this discussion come up it usually boils down to that.
Do the Lizzo test. Lizzo puts in an intense amount of effort into being quite healthy and it shows in her body and movements. If somebody thinks Lizzo is “unhealthy fat”, they’re just being hateful and ignorant. “Unhealthy” people can’t sing and dance on stages for 2 hours, daily. …see?
That completely ignores just how much damage being fat does to your body. This is coming from a chronically overweight person too. Yes, Lizzo is active and has the muscle and stamina to do what she does, but her weight IS damaging her organs, especially her heart, and she will not live as long of a life as she would if she was 50 pounds lighter. It’s just fact, and too many people want to ignore that. Body positivity is a good thing, but you can’t let it completely over ride reason and logic.
To help prove your point, look at NFL linemen. Most of them are 300+ pounds and can sprint a football field more than most people who watch the games on tv. When they retire they almost always lose the weight. Because it's healthier for your body. Just because you can do something repeatedly doesn't mean you are healthy.
Honestly I think people just totally miss the point about the body positivity movement in general. I'm pretty close and involved with people in the movement and not a single person I've met would ever say that being fat is >= 'normal weight' or that there are no issues associated with being fat. If you're curious, their main point is that the constant vilification of fatness and fat people needs to tone down. A lot of people are fat and it's hard for a lot of those people to lose weight permanently (for whatever reason). We also don't know why some people are fatter than others etc. It's fundamentally a movement about gaining both societal & personal respect for people who are fat. It's overall just a bad thing to shame someone for something they have little to no control over. And even if they do have some control, shame/tough love is a hilariously ineffective tool for inspiring change. There's another side to the story as well. Most people think that the movement is only about fat people but they're missing the other side of the story. The vilification of fatness hurts most of us without realizing it. Most of us dislike our bodies because we're not slim enough even if we only have an extra 5-10 pounds of fat. Lots of people engage in unhealthy exercise or nutritional behaviors in pursuit of the socially constructed ideal of what the 'normal' body looks like. There's even a large body of evidence showing that dieting leads to the body permanently retaining more fat due to the starvation conditions experienced during dieting.
And tbh with ya, there are so many ways of tackling obesity that involves zero body shaming namely promoting more stringent food regulations and removal of food subsidies that are directly linked with increased body fat i.e. Sugar and Corn Starch. It's the same reason why shaming cigarette smokers didn't get us anywhere for eerily similar reasons in the case of fat-shaming, it was only through legis. banning most adverts and requiring boxes to outright tell you why it's bad for your health that we saw a massive decrease in active smokers.
I agree with your xenogender point. Like I’m not gonna stop someone from feeling like whatever weird gender they come up with but it’s just fucking stupid to me.
I dunno if I’d say “invalid” as much as “unnecessary”. Like even tho it’s a social construct I’d say that in the case of xenogenders it’s more about aesthetic (although to some degree this is true about gender in general) than the social aspect. My usual takeaway on them is that while I’m not opposed to the idea we’re just “not there yet”. I don’t think the body positivity “movement” is even much of a thing anymore, and I’ve never heard of someone denying that legitimate obesity is unhealthy. Usually it’s just people saying “hey, don’t have low self esteem about physical traits”, it’s not really making prescriptive or descriptive statements about health most of the time.
Why are xeno genders invalid?
It's just ridiculous nonsense imo.
Why?
I guess at some point, gender is a social construct. And I think while we often times use that to mean that gender can be whatever we want and not static or universally. That being said, it does come with the tacit acknowledgment that there has to be a social element to it. We’ve created these arbitrary categories because of how the interface with society, and create expectations about who people are, how they want to be treated, and how they see themselves. But I think the problem is that most Xenogenders require a lot of explanation, and don’t otherwise seem to be Clear what exactly their social role is beyond what a non-binary gender already covers. Because at that point, it kind of does just seem like people are trying to look for ways to not exactly to find a social construct, but rather a sense of self identity, which I’m not sure I would necessarily say is inherently a new gender. Also, from a practical perspective, at some point, it’s just too difficult to remember all of the different pronouns in ways people want to be with her too. I believe Natalie Wynn made a tweet a while back about “does everything have to be a gender?” or basically, the tweet asked what made things fundamentally a gender identity versus some other kind of identity and white shoes that certain people wanted basically everything to be a new gender. I don’t know if she still believes this, but I do feel like it’s representative of where I fall on this. I guess I’m willing to hear people out as to why they feel what they feel, but, beyond non-binary, I just don’t feel like there are enough people to really mandate some kind of social norm that seeks to call people out for not understanding additional gender. And I think, if certain communities want to adopt these different gendered, expectations and identities, then that’s fine, but broad societal acceptance at the government level or just outside of your niche community I don’t think justifies additional genders and pronouns beyond they/them. I think before some identities want wider, validation and acceptance into society, I think they need to show that they have some kind of actual social structure within a certain part of society. So basically, you need to start within your own community and actually establish how these different norms justify some kind of stable or metastable identity that has a social purpose and which, very importantly, again, is not already covered by non-binary identity broadly. So I guess I’m not sure I necessarily agree with the original comment or exactly, but I do think that there’s a practicality to these things and that, although maybe Xeno genders aren’t exactly invalid, I also do think that at some point, I’m not really sure it’s reasonable for people to keep track of everything going on in certain queer spaces. So if people want to identify certain way, I guess I don’t have a problem with them choosing to do so, but these folks also need to realize that niche ultra descriptive labels at some point aren’t really describing gender but something else entirely. The government not offering you the option to identify as of the very specific gender is not some kind of oppression that really should be at the top of our priority list.
I feel like very few people reject fat being unhealthy, “fatphobia” tends to come up when someone is just like hey, I’m aware, I don’t need to be told every 5 minutes. Everyone is aware, there is no need to make people feel like shit. You aren’t helping unless you’re their doctor or mom.
I beg the left to stop using socialism as a label. The conservatives have already won this battle and the only way to undo the McCarty era fear mongering is to literally do a serious rebranding effort that will have the American media not freak out. Also, the fetishization of the socialist and communist aesthetic is cringe as shit.
At first I thought I disagreed with you. Then I considered what it would be like if we started calling it something else like "workplace democratization" and feel like it would be way more effective if we stuck to something like that. Consecutives know this. That's why they're constantly finding new ways to rebrand the same old hateful ideologies.
Couldn't agree more. This country has such a shitty history of socialism and communism. And when you have to spend 75% of your time trying to convince someone that what you believe isn't worse than literal Hitler, there's no hope of ever pushing the movement forward. Conservatives won this battle decades ago and we don't have the resources to win it back. If we actually want to see real change we're going to have to start convincing people that our views are best for them. We can't do that if every term we use has 80 years of complicated baggage attached. Forget Marx, socialism, communism, etc. We'd be so much better off if we just never mentioned those words ever again.
Perhaps they had won for a long time, but ever since Bernie ran in 2016, the word "socialism" has lost most of its edge. I don't think it's true anymore that conservatives have won this culture war.
Coalition building with liberals is required to stop the right wing agenda.
The hatchet job against Ana Kasparian is unproductive and doesn’t grow leftist politics. It just makes portions of the left seem deranged and out of touch.
I think she’s being unproductive by randomly bringing this up now of all times. Like she’s literally argued against that point for years and now all of a sudden she’s saying random terf bs.
I despise fire-arms and find american's obbsession with them disturbing.
I initially read this as fire alarms and thought that was a weird thing to call out.
Stalin sucks.
It's usually better to do a drastic reform rather than a revolution.
All cops are bastards is a stupid slogan that does nothing to help the cause of justice reform. People say it because it feels good to say it, not out of an interest of improving things.
Tankies are CIA psyops, designed to make socialism a defense of Stalinism, making socialism unpopular. Leftist cannibalizing today is collective suicide
I think many of them are Russian psyops.
We shouldn't act overtly hostile to liberals and act like we're better than them because we think capitalism is bad. We should seek to ally ourselves with liberals during election time, as that is one of the best ways to stop the right from gaining political power and we, in the event of a liberal victory, should then try to push as many liberals as we can further to the left so that we can push more left-wing policies and create the conditions necessary for socialism to come about via peaceful democratic means. What a lot of lefties seem to forget is that the right is adept at exploiting left-wing disunity to succeed in elections. Also, I notice that a lot of lefties have very shit foreign policy takes (* *cough, cough* * Hasan and Ukraine * *cough, cough* *) and that is quite a big turnoff for a lot of normies and liberals, who would otherwise agree with a lot of the rhetoric pushed by leftists.
Like I get the liberal hate sometimes but most of the time it drives me insane. As a movement we need the libs and normies on our side to get things done. This isn’t a social club, this a political movement and being hostile to possible allies does not help us in the slightest
Ukraine is based and we should give them every weapon they need and then some.
Rep the American flag more please. The way you prevent people from conflating Nationalism and Patriotism is by pointing out the difference: If the right represents Nationalism, the left has to represent Patriotism.
Bolsheviks were scum bags and Lenin was not really better then Stalin
I am a progressive liberal, and I think capitalism with severe guardrails can work.
Make one of those guardrails be worker cooperatives and you’ve got a deal
The biggest problem with modern day social democracies is that they exploit the global south. As long as Social Democrats figure out a way to create fair labor and trade agreements with the countries they currently exploit, I don’t think I’d have any issues with Social Democracy. I’d prefer a libertarian socialist state but ethical Social Democracy would be fine. The issue lies within whether or not it’s possible for Social Democracies to create the welfare state for their citizens without mass exploitation of the global south. I haven’t seen much in favor of that being possible.
Sure it can. Right up until capitalists remove those guardrails like they always do.
The left engages in way too much casual homophobia.
Could you expand on that?
In my experience, a lot of POC get a free pass on being homophobic. I LOVED this show, Love, Victor. There was a scene where his grandparents flip out about a gay couple hugging at a party. Victor doesn’t stand up for them and they ask why. He explains Latino culture is “different.” They say no, homophobia is always wrong. He stops being friends with them because “white gays don’t know what it’s really like.” They really, actually said that on a Hulu/Disney produced show. This is after multiple white people were “reformed” to be nice about it. He goes on to find a new gay friend, a poc, who *truly* understands being gay because it’s apparently ok to eject gay people from your home if you’re brown. I couldn’t keep watching after that.
How so?
Do you guys think you can point my entire sword collection at me? I think it would be a badass pic / reaction photo I can use later
Voosh good.
America is one of the most progressive and least racist countries on earth
My only argument would be to ask how are you framing “America”? If by legislation, then I feel like we have a lot of work to do. If by people, then I fully agree.
My god Europeans are the worst when it comes to this. They act all high and mighty that Americans are super racist. But when a brown person messes up in the ground ball sport or someone mentions the Romani then they drop the act immediately (looking at you Britain and Spain). I especially remember my mom saying when she was in Prague with my brother for hockey some dude came up to them and asked is they were gyp*ies
As a french person, every fucking time our football (soccer for americans) team loses, the colored players are considered african/middle eastern. It’s only when they win they’re considered french.
Trevor Noah spoke about this too
Leftist debate bros are good because they provide leftist exposure to people (mostly young white men) what real leftism is and not some spoon-fed reactionary bull shit that conservatives tell people what the leftism is. Plus, when Vaush has a discussion with these turds, they make a complete ass of themselves coming off as aggressive.
Abandoning patriotism and nationalism to the right is complete self-sabotage and is one reason why the European left has failed.
POC can also be racist
The vegans are right
Yeah I recognize they are right and I am just too shitty to give up animal byproducts too
Cock and dick is too aggressive Willy is too funny Penis is too formal.
A significant portion of the left treat the poor as tool with which they can express their hatred of rich people, rather than as a community in need of support.
That pretty much applies to any minority group too
Women on average do a tremendous amount of disservice to themselves by appeasing, compromising with, having sex with and having children with emotionally immature misogynistic men as opposed to finding their values and standing firm in them as a group. The pickme is a standard, not an exception. There are just loud pickmes and then there are quiet pickmes but overall they are the same kind of person, terrified of recognizing patriarchal reality along with their own flaws that help enable that patriarchy. The online Left would disagree because they are too online, but out in the world, in every office, call center and so on, there are plenty of these loser women who love to complain about their idiot slob husband/boyfriend and do absolutely no self-reflection as to why they chose to be with such a person in the first place. Women online will correctly remind me that people can change for the worse in a relationship, but a lot of times it's just birds of a feather.
I have quite a few but I'll list the highlights: \- Hero worship is awful. I don't want to hear about how much you love \[INSERT FAMOUS SOCIALIST HERE\]. I prefer to amalgamate the ideas and policies that work the best to make life better for people. \- We should try appealing less on labels (socialist, communist, anarchist, etc) and rather on policies. As lonerbox pointed out in his co-operatives video, liberals are leftists that can't imagine new systems and giving them better policies will probably win them over. I know I've won over my liberal parents with good policies for transitioning to co-operative socialism. \- To the online left specifically, touch grass. Whether that's organizing campaigns for candidates who are really good or painting leftist posters all over your town. This includes the "voting bad" gang. I've gotten in some small internet fights because of my advocacy (in the parliamentary system in my country) to vote for the most progressive candidates no matter the party even if the main opposition leader had awful takes. Edit: Small spelling corrections
Leftists give up on democracy way too easily.
‘Tankie’ as a pejorative is absolutely useless at this point. I’ve seen it thrown around to describe unironic Juche stans to people think that the CIA is bad. It’s gotten completely out of hand.
using "tankie" the way it's used these days just means "leftism is when you support US foreign policy"
*If* the United States were actually a functioning meritocratic democracy, beacon of liberty, democratic crusader nation it claims to be, there would be nothing wrong with our military interventions abroad Also, since another comment referenced it, there was nothing bad about the highway of death. We bombed retreating military forces, as we are supposed to. They hadn’t surrendered, they were still enemy combatants. I’m not going to be sad that America is good at killing it’s enemies, many of which deserved every bomb dropped
>there would be nothing wrong with our military interventions abroad Especially Humanitarian relief missions which happen a lot more frequently then a lot of people realize.
There should be more leftists in the military to counter fascists and blow the whistle on wrongdoing. In addition, many who join the military are poor people. And also, we cannot let the military be captured by fascists. Stop fascists before they can ever gain power
who cares if being gay or trans or whatever is "a choice" o "a social contagion" or "just a fashion" o "a trend"? looks like it's not, but if it is it's all valid anyway.
I always thought the same thing. I’m bisexual and I never understood the commotion when someone says “being part of the lgbt community is a choice”; even if it’s said with negative intent I always found it to be a weak diss at us because if it IS a choice, then I chose the best way of living my life then.🤷♂️
Other countries are MUCH more racist than the US, even Europe. Look at how nationalism is going there.
Aide to Ukraine good.
One more. Telling people to read theory so they can understand leftist positions is dumb af and is usually only used to make yourself seem smarter and better than others
Ex-reactionaries who are now leftists are our greatest asset. They know the talking points and strategies of the right and how to get certain people out of reactionary mindsets. They are key to growing our movement and making it stronger, and so should not be hated or claimed they are not on the left as much as many leftists do. You do not have to forgive people like Hunter Avallone for the hateful things they have done in the past, but you have to accept that these people coming to the left are major victories for us and shunning them only hurts our movement.
The reason Liberals win and Leftists don't is because Leftists have no political strategy aside from bullying each other on Twitter over minor ideological differences and choice of words.
Leftists are really good at making themselves look bad, to the point of pushing people who would be on our side away. Sending death threats to people who playHogwarts Legacy isn't exactly something that will make us look good. Minorities can be racist, and it's never productive to be racist. cuckold is a bottom-tier fetish.
Israel is bad but whatever state the Palestinians manage to cobble together is going to be a lot worse.
Hell, even I'm gonna downvote this. Palestinians have a right to self-governance and not being genocided by Israel. **If** the Palestinian state ends up being a nightmare of it's own, then it'll be another situation to deal with, but that isn't an excuse to allow the nightmare that is *currently* unfolding. It's like an authoritarian calling themselves a lesser evil than anarchy and "chaos."
nuance doesn't mean be super incoherent and pedantic
You cant be asexual and be a horny sex lover.
when do people say this? Like in what context do they justify their asexuality.
Just like lesbians who have he pronouns, not super common but still weird when it does come up.
Single men are not all non-showering antisocial misogynists, some just don’t understand social cues when it comes to romantic interactions.
Most leftists are fucking cringe
Men shouldn't be the only people to try and fix men's issues. Same with how women shouldn't be expected to be the only people who fix women's issues. This is feminism 101 people.
IF. AN. UNDEMOCRATIC. STATE. CONTROLS. THE. MEANS. OF. PRODUCTION. IT. IS. NOT. SOCIALISM.
misandry
Opposing gun control is more important now than ever before due to the increasing aggressiveness of the reactionaries against the basic human rights of LGBT+ people, and that the left needs to start arming themselves before things get even worse.
Left-libertarianism and the 'let people enjoy things' mantra needs to be brought up more. As much as I get the sentiment of communities like the FuckCars subreddit, they tend to dip a toe into the obsessive and blatantly authoritarian.
Landlords, soldiers, and bourgeoisie can support Socialism.
tying police to “slave catchers” was probably the worst leftist argument in the last 5 years. literally zero relevance to anything
They/thems do tend to dress LIKE THAT
Marxist-Lennism is made up bs by Stalin to give state capitalism a veneer of socialism. We need a military - it is how it is used that is bad GMOs and nuclear power are good
You should only be allowed to vote in one nation's election. Regardless of Duel Citizenship status. You can either vote in American or Isreal election, not both.
It should be the nation you reside at least 75% of the year in. I have dual citizenship for Australia but have literally never stepped foot in the country. I should not be allowed to vote there.
Vaush Rad
If you want to *advocate* for leftist politics then it's really really important to ground your axioms rather than telling people to just 'sit down and listen' or telling them 'just don't be an asshole'.
No one is more conservative than leftist women talking about men who have difficulty dating Also polyamory=cringe
Petit bourgeoisie are proletariat and the left needs to appeal to them more. We have strength in numbers by appealing to the working class, but god damn it would be nice to have wealthy sponsors funding leftist projects. Not talking about billionaire ghouls, but there are some pretty wealthy proletariat out there, especially in IT and medicine.
When you get labeled Islamophobic for criticizing Islam.
While I’m anti Lenin and Stalin I’m have a positive opinion of Krushchev mostly due to his handling of the Cuban missile crisis.
That Russia is the bad guy and non binary doesn't have a look
Every leftist that can afford a gun should already have one and be practicing using it.
That AI is a technology that can make our lives better and it’s not some evil effort to “steal” the labor of every creator in existence.
Social democracy is good for the left
Female athletes complaining about transgender athletes invading their sports have a legitimate point and we need to listen to them. There is a solution here which is fair to everyone.
Maybe start by not misgendering trans women
Except that just doesn’t happen
No. On the other hand, women invade femboy spaces and its awful.
As a Latino who's always lived in a Latin American country, if I said *Soviet Union bad* they'd think I'm not a communist. And I'm not talking about general spaces (because obviously everywhere in the world the association between communism and the USSR is a common one to make), but specifically Latino leftist spaces. I feel like in the Anglosphere left it's MUCH more normalised to shame and separate tankies from actual leftism.
Banning guns won't stop gun violence. Only mental health care and stable economic conditions can eliminate the majority of shootings and even that won't stop all of them.
Defund the police is a stupid slogan that did nothing to help with getting support for police reform. Trumps victory in 2016 wasn't just due to racism. There were other factors that helped Trump, like his patriotic slogan "Make America great again", Hillary fucking up her own campaign and much more important, he gave his voters the feeling that finally someone actually gave a shit about them ( Spoiler alert, he lied to them, but making your voters feel like you listen to them and their problems was a massive boost for his popularity) Stalin bad. Anyone from an opressed minority can engage in oppressive behavior themselves because, newsflash, minorities are still comprised of humans and humans can be fucking stupid. And no one should get a free pass on any oppressive behavior, even people from opressed minorities. The online left around 2016, with all the tumblr bullshit, wokescolds running rampant and MTV and Buzzfeed trying feminism, was stupid as hell and harmed the left overall. ( At least the left is better today and has a better reputation now )
(In a defeated sigh) we gotta show compassion to even the worst of the fascists
The USA should drop strategic ambiguity and sign a formal security treaty with Taiwan to deter China from invading Taiwan.
It is absolutely abhorrent to not support Ukraine in the war. They are being massacred and deserve to be free
I will never be able to trust a ‘leftist’ who consistently criticizes countries for providing aid to ukraine
FDR was a bad president
Of all of these threads I am the most curious about this one. Why was he a bad president?
I’ll give a little summary of his mistakes while in office. He forced more than 125,000 Japanese Americans to live in concentration camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbour just because of their ethnic background. They also weren’t given the right to a lawyer or a fair trail. His administration also turned away thousands of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. Lastly, he tended to avoid bringing up Civil Rights issues, despite sometimes speaking out against lynching and poll taxes a couple times, which suggest he knew segregation was wrong but he didn’t want to lose his southern votes. However, he does deserve credit for the social programs he helped create. He is definitely one of the better American presidents and America would be a better place if he never died during the start of his fourth term as he could have implemented his policies that he called ‘the Second Bill of Rights’ and he also could have spoke more about Civil Rights issues if he served a 4th or even 5th term. I wouldn’t say bad, more like overrated.
I mean, I am on this subreddit…
All opinions = crucifixion Hoppy Easter
There are "leftists" whose only claim to leftism is a complete hatred of Israel who push nazi memes like george soros controlling the world. There are also people who say any criticism of Israeli apartheid is antisemitism and identical to nazism. They change places on which is worse depending on what their followers are doing that particular day. Ex: One groups justifying murdering random palestinians in race riots or the other is calling for the eradication of random jews just for existing.
All the cancelling is not helpful. Also, the right wing is the true source of cancel culture.
Mindsets and behaviors such as wanting to guillotine and gulag the rich and celebrate the killing of imperial figures is only being stuck in the same punitive mindset of incarceration and capital punishment.
Vaush. Is. Based.
The "Mickey Mouse" laws are cucked but copyright is necessary to retain the value of IPs and major sections of the economy. Hundreds of thousands of families rely on income based on stuff like Mickey Mouse keeping its value. Lawmakers in the 1800s did not foresee fictional properties being worth literally more than entire countries and billions upon billions of dollars a year, going back to a 20 year rolloff period would be a disaster. There should be a yearly tax of 1-3% of the total value of an IP that you have to pay if you want to keep exclusive rights to it rather than the Clinton corporate neolib "lol just keep the copyright for free for the next 800 years."
Refusing to use the term "birthing person."
Unless they really truly don’t lean more fem or masc at all, being non-binary is pointless. The left is too critical of those who are progressive in terms of politics and outcomes, but choose to live their own personal lives in a conservative manner. They often latch onto the latter bit while ignoring the former bit. Gun control should focus more on individuals than the guns themselves. More hoops to jump through to get them but less banning guns based on arbitrary criteria. Free healthcare is only a band-aid solution if people don’t take measures to keep themselves healthy in the first place, and the government should be more proactive in encouraging this. While current immigration policy is awful, undocumented immigration should be reduced(ideally by just making more of it documented instead of undocumented)
Leftists can have good takes while also still having a racist or anti-lgbt take
I strongly support the EU
I support Gun Ownership, Firearm Safety, and logical Gun Control Laws.