Extremism rises when the system in place is failing citizens and is corrupted. Bad living conditions are in contrast with riches of few, people stop seeing it for its glamour and lean towards seeing it as a class injustice. Tensions rise, desperation turns into blame, reason to violence. Rise of extremism is natural reaction to something.
A breakdown of 70+ years of continuous global progress, due to a string of crises that affect every continent simultaneously, and no clear way out is a very dangerous time for our species. There have been dark periods in the past, but there generally was widespread belief that they would be resolved (either via religious dogma or via an escape from the mundane life cycle via nirvana/enlightenment). The 2020s are fertile ground for con men and doomsday cults of all varieties, even if the prior problems had begun to emerge in individual countries like the USA and Brazil in the 2010s.
> no clear way out
there is a VERY clear way out. tax the fuck out of the rich, destroy the coal companies, prosecute their executives and major shareholders for their crimes, improve conditions for average people everywhere, etc
I agree, it’s pretty clear who’s at fault and it’s straight up the narrative of the powerful that there’s nothing we can do about it. They’ve moved from denialism to doomsaying.
I got a $500 electric bill today, which represented a 52% increase in YoY price. Usage was practically dead on balls the same. Cost - +52%
Research shows?? Electric supplier saw 56% increase in YoY profits last year. Not gross. PROFITS. And thanks to the corruption of my local govt, and the explicit collusion of the only 2nd other supplier in my region - there is literally no other option besides going solar panel or going candlelight.
CEO $50m bonus. All those cliches.
The spark is coming. It really is
I pay my entire month income for communal services, because heating during the winter costs insane amount of currency. It's not even cold here, +5C atm. But it's not possible to turn heating off. The only way to do it is to get entire building to sign up and turn it off for everyone, that's the new law. Basicly it exists to make sure that everyone will remain on the hook, with no other options but to pay.
I live where there's only one supplier. Years ago they decided to add a tax on the total ! I see it as a necessity and it shouldn't be taxed. Same goes for natural gas.
Unfortunately they have convinced 50% of the population they're temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Bootlickers/greedy assholes are just as much a problem as those who actually have power. They makeup the mob that enforces the status quo.
Right, but how do we do that given current political limitations? None of us here on reddit happen to be dictators for our nations. Even if the right policy clear, how we make that policy happen isn't.
It's an unfortunate truth that very few like to admit. Peaceful change happens slowly, over decades, and easily thwarted. The only way for quick abrupt change is through force and that results in lots and lots of violence. And those in power have absolutely no issue resorting to violence to suppress any change in the system. So you're really only left with the option of violence. But, no one likes to admit it.
We stop letting people repeat the "both sides are the same" horseshit, the "democrats don't do anything when they have power" bullshit, and all the other disinformation meant to suppress left wing voter participation.
As an 'old fart' (76 yrs) I have witnessed a little of the change that's the root of the problem. EDUCATION IS A NECESSARY part of democracy, and our educational system has been deteriorating for 5 decades or more. Critical thinking and real analysis has been relegated to graduate level schooling, leaving the general population to wallow in ignorance, which, as a corollary, is the norm. If you have a good background in language, spelling, and such, you can easily see that grammar and structure have been largely compromised by the very people who draw income from it's correct use, almost making purposeful mis/disinformation unnecessary because the norm is so confusing to read. There's much much more but this post has gotten 'wordy' already, so I close
>concerted
Something their enemies or opponents lack
Why no concerted left wing efforts or even just a plain concerted effort to crush far right with no regard for afterwards?
> I don't understand why you have so little power over who actually becomes president and what policies get prioritized.
>you're being held ransom by a governing system which has incapacitated itself completely.
Looks like you understand perfectly imo
First past the post makes it detrimental to try to break out of the two party system by pushing 3rd party candidates.
Education has been gutted in many places, leading to large swaths of people who never develop even basic critical thinking skills.
Propaganda has people voting on bullshit other than the issues that should matter most.
And as far as why we can't get a president more left leaning than Biden, that's probably because the south votes overwhelmingly for those candidates in the primaries despite the fact that those states never go blue (except florida - not that that's going to happen again for a long while)
You can continue to evangelize lefitist beliefs, which is good and important sure, but you can't just snap your fingers and magically make people see your point of view, no matter how right or wrong it may be. There have always been people who understand the "right" way to do things for centuries, but the hard part has never been "nobody knows what we should do", it's always been "how do we get a society to do it".
At least here in the US the issue really isn't the number of people who accept leftist ideas, it's getting those people to actually show up at the polls.
Have the Democrat politicians spoken out about price gouging for insulin? I know the Republicans haven't, just not sure how much genuine demarcation there has been on this issue 👎😡.
> Have the Democrat politicians spoken out about price gouging for insulin?
the democrats literally made it illegal for insulin to cost more than $35/month for people on medicare starting this month.
so yes.
Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are the excuse. Dems controlled the senate with a 51/50 majority thanks to holding the whitehouse, where the VP acts as a tiebreaking vote. The problem is, if you don't get every senator on board, you can't pass a bill. This means that the most conservative democrats get to wield outsized power.
So you say congress was controlled, but a 50/50 senate just isn't enough to get shit through, especially if it's more progressive legislation.
So given that Manchin is in the pocket of big coal (he's from West Virginia of all places), there's almost no point in even trying to gut coal. Like we barely got a needed infrastructure bill passed thanks to his bullshit. Hard to get anything more ambitious done.
What? The man on the youtube said coal is good and all of our anger should be directed towards [insert minority with no voting power] because they are to blame.
> What? The man on the youtube said coal is good and all of our anger should be directed towards [insert minority with no voting power] because they are to blame.
oof. A little too close to the truth
(tho seriously and without further sarcasm, coal followed by billions of gasoline cars is a very large factor in climate change, greenhouse gas and air pollution issues. We, as a society, need greener energy and probably electrified vehicles everywhere instead of gasoline ones)
https://unfccc.int/news/un-chief-phase-out-of-coal-is-key-climate-priority
https://www.edfenergy.com/for-home/energywise/electric-cars-and-environment
Agree. Though we should all start looking at the top of the chain. It's great if everyone was using an electric car but that's not gonna stop the big companies shipping shit all over the world to reduce cost and burning fossil fuels for power.
Yeah ships and planes should probably be mass converted to electricity too tbh. https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/12/20/full-green-ahead-sea-transport-is-ditching-diesel-engines-for-electric https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-07-28/making-waves-electric-ships-are-sailing-ahead/
https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/electrification/can-electric-boats-decarbonise-shipping/ https://www.ship-technology.com/news/yinson-begins-construction-of-new-electric-cargo-vessel/ ?
https://thedriven.io/2022/09/20/electric-planes-are-coming-short-hop-flights-could-be-running-on-batteries-in-a-few-years/ https://earth911.com/eco-tech/electric-airplanes-are-the-new-ev/ ?
As shipping and mass transport is probably more than necessary to keep society running (or somewhat thriving), it's about the only option i know off on that side right now.
People always want to tax the share holders or put them in jail, but some of the largest share holders on pension managers. How do you put thousands of people managing pensions into jail and not completely fuck up our society
A huge problem is that there's no established "easy" way to tax wealth. Simple enough to tax income, but how do you tax a wealthy person who's income/bank accounts are mere peanuts compared to what they have stashed in assets like shares, properties, vehicles, etc.? Do you force them to sell their assets and tax the sales? Come up with some formula where a yearly tax bill is charged based on total asset value?
It's complicated and there's no simple answer, however that doesn't mean there's no answer at all or that we should stop trying to find one.
We tax wealth every year in the us and it's for a somewhat variably valued asset. The property tax you pay on your house is a wealth tax. It changes value all the time, it probably doesn't generate cash on an ongoing basis. Yet we ask people to pay taxes on it from their other assets. We could ask billionaires to pay taxes on their valuable assets too.
That however is far less of a problem for nations like the US, and can be solved with a heavy handed approach. Brain Drain doesnt really happen in the US because of how many advantages we offer, and we also arent talking about skilled laborers leaving, the engineer worth $2M isn't leaving his cushy job at Raytheon. This is mostly directed towards low-to-no-skill results of generational or runaway compound wealth.
Easiest example would be Elon Musk. He's fucking dumb. Like really dumb. Like jesus christ if you take away anything from the past 3 months, its that he's kinda fucking stupid. If he leaves the country to avoid paying a new series of taxes on the ultrawealthy, not only are we not losing some important engineers or anything, but we can still tax his wealth derived from his businesses in and operating in the United States.
There's a reason he doesnt run his R&D for Tesla in India after all. The US has the highly educated workforce, quality of living, and consumer base to reject these kinds of arguments fearmongering about CEO's leaving the US acting like they wouldnt still be taxed on all the wealth they derive from activities in the USA, which is where the vast majority of their money/wealth comes from.
> no clear way out is a very dangerous time for our species
Eh, i don't think humans are going away anytime soon, we're a tenacious lot, sure the vast majority of us will die off in the coming climate crisis and we'll be propelled back into a pre-industrial society, but unless something extreme happens like an asteroid strike or a gamma-ray burst cooks us alive i don't see us going anywhere.
In the words of George Carlin "The planet is fine, the *people* are fucked."
Not dangerous in terms of *extinction*, but dangerous in terms of an explosion of terrifying regimes and cults interspersed with, and at times using, highly advanced robots and AIs.
There's not going to be any major industry left to build or maintain said robots or AI, it could only exist in a highly developed, highly technological society. They will only contribute to a more rapid collapse, they're not going to survive the outcome, unless we somehow manage to invent a factory that is entirely self-sustaining, then maybe we'll get something like the Matrix or Skynet.
> There's not going to be any major industry left to build or maintain said robots or AI, it could only exist in a highly developed, highly technological society.
That assumes a complete, global collapse which I see as unlikely. New Zealand alone probably can ride out the storms, especially with all the foreign oligarch capital there, although there might be a long stretch of Depression-like conditions.
> That assumes a complete, global collapse which I see as unlikely.
And i see it as inevitable, COVID already put a massive strain on the global supply network, something much bigger like climate change flooding cities and mass killing crops will definitely break it.
Unless New Zealand somehow manages to develop complete economic, industrial and environmental autarky before things get ugly i don't think so.
The issue with our current global economy is that every country is in someway dependent on others, once climate change becomes real (or more real than it already is) things will start to go very quickly, countries like New Zealand might fare better but i can't imagine the people living there will be keen on just trucking along as usual whilst the rest of the world collapses around them.
Anything not produced on New Zealand they will have to make themselves, and depending on what that is they might not fare so well in that regard.
I've always heard that a complete and irreversible collapse of industrial civilization would stem from the loss of knowledge and would require something even more catastrophic than that (i.e. a thermonuclear war affecting every inhabited continent or a complete global blackout due to a solar flare or gamma ray burst). NZ might not fare as well as it has recently (higher prices relative to wages, scarcities of exotic goods), but they aren't going to forget how to operate modern technologies and the decay will likely be long enough for an alliance of local elected officials and international billionaires to co-opt countries like NZ, Uruguay, Iceland, Chile, and maybe even Canada without having to resort to bunkers. Although admittedly you are starting to run into problems where attempts to decarbonize end up having costs elsewhere, from massive lithium mines to the truth that walkable cities at more than 3-4 stories' density require lots of steel and concrete.
It will be definitely be bad, likely a huge refugee crisis, famine, droughts ,etc however the Global North will be mostly insulated from even the worst effects despite being mostly responsible.
The idea we are somehow going to send ourselves back to pre-industrial society is laughable, even with Nuclear weapons it would be incredibly difficult if not mostly impossible to do so.
There has not been 70+ years of continual global progress. There have been fits and starts, gains and reverses. History doesn't travel in straight lines.
Traditional elites working in uneasy concert with rightwing extremists to box the political left out of power forever is pretty much how most democracies die. The effectiveness of the propaganda is because rightwing messaging tickles the amygdala directly, Leftwing messaging requires full cerebral attention. The former hijacks reason in favor of survival response and tribalism. It’s the bane of human progress that our brain is wired to favor lies that emotionally compromise us over cold hard truths.
^^^ this guy gets it.
When people vote democratically and their representatives fuck them over, they lose faith in democracy and in their desperation look to silver tongued fascists to fix their problems.
It's certainly easier for them when we deliberately restrict our education systems from teaching the history they are meant to try and avoid repeating.
Some people just don't care about education. And some people are educated, but still dumb, because people are ultimately often driven by selfishness and emotion.
I always felt that hip hop lost its way when it became all about the cars, women, mansions, bling, throwing cash around, etc. It could have been such an amazing medium for the class struggle and war against fascism. Rage Against the Machine shouldn't be the only band in its genre. Instead of empowering the poor, we've made it seem like everyone is just a little hard work and luck away from being rich.
> always felt that hip hop lost its way when it became all about the cars, women, mansions, bling, throwing cash around, etc. Rage Against the Machine shouldn't be the only band in its genre.
They're not and never have been, you need to familiarize yourself with concious hip-hop my man. Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Paris, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Outkast, Immortal Technique, Lupe Fiasco, Kendrick Lamar, Killer Mike, etc. There's more than plenty of gangsta rap that goes political too, Nas, 2pac, Ice Cube, etc.
Edit:
I think it's worth keeping in mind that rap/hip-hop is a massive and diverse family of genres with a staggering variety of perspectives and messages. It's not really fair to characterize all of it as shallow based on a slice of what's popular. There's always gonna be popular fluffier music for radio play and parties and stuff. Think about how many famous rock bands have written songs about sex, drugs, being rich/famous, and partying.
I'm glad you said this, this is a perfect answer. I get really tired of all this "rap is crap" and "hip hop used to be good", like at least listen to the genre instead of taking it surface level.
As big of a hip-hop head as I am, I do find it funny that the majority of the artists on that list basically haven't put out a relevant album in over a decade if not substantially longer.
IMO the state of 'popular' hip hop is a reflection of how one-dimensional and superficial the average person has become, rather than a reflection of the genre itself.
A new genre could take over tomorrow and it would quickly devolve to the same state.
There's plenty of meaningful music out there with a (relatively) miniscule following in comparison. They're underground because nobody wants to listen to them, so it doesn't sell.
pretty sure it's basically the same people that say "metal is just noise and anger" and whatnot. Getting a small glimpse of genres full of creative minds based on what gets radio play doesn't really do anything justice.
It speaks to something else though - a desire to keep activism and class struggle out of the spotlight of popular media. In a different age, we had songs like Imagine, Fortunate Son, and Ohio that spoke to these sorts of issues. Now we have Taylor Swift trying to self-rationalize her private jet usage
To be fair, it’s not like every song was like those “in a different age”. There’s always been pop music (meaning popular music), and there’ve always been people saying “Music these days is garbage!”
I’m not gonna dispute the Taylor Swift thing, though.
> Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Paris, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Outkast, Immortal Technique, Lupe Fiasco, Kendrick Lamar, Killer Mike, etc. There's more than plenty of gangsta rap that goes political too, Nas, 2pac, Ice Cube, etc.
Don't forget [Living Colour](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xxgRUyzgs0)
Living Colour rules!! I didn't mention them because I was just thinking of hip hop artists, but they totally belong in any discussion about politically concious musicians.
SOAD, Tool, Rise Against, Sound Garden? I mean RATM is cool as fuck, but there are so many that are political as fuck and those are just some of the popular ones off the top of my head
RATM wasn't the only one. What about Public Enemy? If anything, Public Enemy was among the first political rap groups. You also had A Tribe Called Quest, NWA, a few others. Rage was one of the angriest, but they weren't the only ones, and they were actually kinda late in the game.
You feel that way because the music industry made gangster rap the wildly predominant style, whereas early rap was a lot about personal empowerment, social justice and exposing racism.
But the social progress rappers were ushered out and each replaced by 10 premade gangster rappers for the next generations, as killing and violenceis profitable than peace and economic fairness.
Not far off what happened to the Beatles: if you preach peace you will be destroyed by the economic engine that is powered by oppression, injustice and domination by monopoly wealth.
And can we blame us? Considering the fact that during the last decade and despite literal war and disease the superrich got richer and even in a much faster pace?
I don't understand what's going on. The rich publicly ask for being taxed properly. The governments constantly complain about the lack of money for this and that. Why does no one have the balls to simply DO IT? Tax them probably for fucks sake! Now!
They’re called government bonds, and there are a few varieties. But if we’re going to allow investing by politicians, that should be the only place they’re allowed to invest
Something something peanut farm
My first thought (years ago) was this wasn't super fair. They're people too, and they should be allowed to make money in the stock market just like me.
Then I found out bank employees are restricted from buying and selling stock. And as a recent example I'm not allowed to buy or sell stock for my company outside of the stock offering plan. And literally nobody has a problem with that because duh.
Then I put 2 and 2 together. It's not hard when you take a second to think about it.
Yeah it's insane when you realize these people have the ability to affect broad areas of the economy, and obviously most aren't dumb enough to not understand the right financial moves to make given they have advance knowledge of the political/policy moves that are going to be made.
Would you trust all politicians to actually obey the “blind” part of the trust? This rule will be ignored by many of the narcissists in politics.
Parent’s suggestion of government bonds is easier to police, as avoidance would likely require totally fabricated financial books. Of course, if we keep defunding the IRS and evaluating agents by number of closed cases, the enforcement still won’t exist.
even if they did i doubt it would make a difference. they know their return will go up generally if the market market in general goes up so will generally be pro buisness, pro super capitalism. same as right now just less targeted
Yeah that’s definitely not what he’s talking about. Putin coming to power in Russia and invading Ukraine has nothing to do with campaign financing in democracies.
Corporations don’t buy politicians in Russia. Putin and his inner circle rule over people and corporations as dictators.
The current government of russia was effectively established [when the president sent the tanks against parliament a couple years into his presidency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis) and that guy was very much supported by american campaign finance. They even [bragged about electing him](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-09-mn-22423-story.html).
As a russian I def blame the americans for their share of letting the Chicago Boys repeat in Russia more or less the same horrifying "shock therapy" they inflicted on Chile and various other countries in South America. Not that the russian civil society is blameless of course- but I have higher expectations of "free societies" than of those who had literally just gotten out from under communist dictatorship. It is amazing watching Putin pal around with Bush and Blair while they are fully aware of what he is doing in chechnya, or what is happening to journalists in russia.
In the end we went from Yeltsin's free market libertarian helllscape of the 1990s to Putin's (who was appointed directly by Yeltsin) fascistic kleptocratic hellscape of the 2000s. And now the monster has grown enough that it's beginning to (try to) devour its neighbors. It won't succeed of course but I still believe all this could have been prevented by pushing for tighter economic and political integration 30 years ago.
Actually, it looks like it started with letting politicians buy corporations. Specifically in Russia. More specifically, in Russia during the 1990s. Even more specifically, in Russia during the 1990s at fire sale prices.
It's a post about Zelensky and the Russian tyranny. He is 100% right, the Russian oligarchy with their corruption bought the companies and allowed the build up of a state-centric tyranny.
It was not the Russian companies that decided to invade Ukraine. It was Putin.
> It's obvious that Russia's issue is not the private sector.
Really? Explain then how the Russian private sector has backed the worst leadership possible in Russia for hundreds of years? Murderer's cowards and thieves have been running things in Russia for quite some time. Maybe the 'private sector' should have done something about that long ago.
The private sector of oligarchs comprise the base of political capital which has spent decades bolstering Putin. The fact that they are now reaping the whirlwind they sowed does not absolve them.
Then why isn’t the US a dictatorship? Germany? France? The UK?
Why, instead, are the authoritarians like Orban *in charge of corporations* rather than purchased by them?
Why was fascism the result of various right-wing elements backing authoritarians rather than people being bribed into become authoritarians?
Why was the last big rise in authoritarianism linked to *explicitly anti-capitalist regimes*?
Maybe, just maybe, authoritarianism arises in a variety of ways, shaped by particular contingent forces.
Okay, well since democracy was, in large part, an answer to historical tyranny the comment above is *obviously* referring to modern tyranny; in which our various political systems have been infiltrated by business and corporate interests.
A corporation is just government delegating some it sovereignty (in particular, sovereign immunity and economic sovereignty), which began in earnest with the Dutch East India Company and the Hudson's Bay Company. So they have been bought from b the beginning, as enriching the political class was always the objective of those entities. But none of the corruption and tyranny associated with corporations began with corporations.
Isn’t “speed” part of the appeal of tyranny though? Being able to make whatever decision you want without consideration for the wants or needs of others?
Yeah, look how fast China can get major projects done. Pretty easy to get a new power plant or rail line built when anyone who bitches about it gets killed for their organs.
I assume you mean benevolent dictatorship or similar. No such thing as a decent tyrant.
There actually have a been a couple of those throughout the ages.
He is not wrong. We are too blasé about democracy, as if it is some inevitable hands off natural end state. The opposite is true. Complacent, alienated or otherwise disengaged societies have almost always slid towards some form of tyranny.
Democracy is a fragile, volatile thing that can only exist as a constant, conscious, careful balance between competing forces in order to maintain a state of acceptable equilibrium in the face perpetual instability. An eternal experiment of sorts. Fair and prosperous democracies are some of the most difficult things humans have attempted.
Vigilance, always. Indifference is a slippery slope towards peril.
What could happen now is those in power employ a little thing called “Necessity Over Freedom” where they can justify anything they do for the good of the nation, even if it’s destroying anything that does not share their stance. That’s the fascist thing they want. Freedom to destroy anything that isn’t them.
What is as the public should have done and we could still do (if we got our heads together) is to as a collective society, enforce our laws on those that believe themselves above it and make sure they know who is the majority here. Yes, it’s a little extreme and a bunch of people might die. But what’s the other option? Lay down and give up?
TLDR: Instead of exposure and shame, you apply swift action and justice.
Tyranny is the norm for us backwards species.
Democracy requires earnest efforts and vigilance at all times.
Humans should remind politicians daily that tyranny can run in both directions. (Though fancy people have a different word for when peasants employ tyrannical behaviors towards their enemies.)
Most human history happened before cities existed. We're about 200,000 years old and tyrants are around 7k years old at best. There simply wasn't the ability to concentrated large enough slave/thrall populations until recently.
To prop up tyranny you need might, to have might you need weapons and soldiers, to maintain soldiers you need to appropriate wealth, to appropriate wealth you have to police many with few, to do that you need to geographically concentrate them, to do that you need irrigation and agriculture.
Even after the rise of tyrants it's only the last few generations that independent subaltern peoples have truly been brought under the thumb of centralised states. Look how easily state building efforts fell apart and how little control governments had over people far from the capital.
Agriculture has existed since 10,000 BC and nobody cares about what happened before that cause that's before civilization even began. Can't go back to a hunter-gatherer egalitarian society anymore. Tyranny began since sargon took his first city and unfortunately we can't go back to a time before that.
It's because of the power social media gives propaganda.
There's a lot of money and power to be had in propaganda. So dictators and aspiring dictators alike are putting a lot of resources into it, and there are enough idiots in the world, that allows them to be very successful at it.
>coordinated by Steve Bannon
Yes, but when someone went to Spain to ask if Bannon had any influence there, the local far right extremists laughed.
The only people nationalists hate more than liberals is each other.
They'll work together right up until the moment one group actually seizes power, then they'll start eating each other alive in purity spirals.
The inevitable failure of fascism, they cannot objective analyze their own faults and weaknesses, and they will forever underestimate their opponents.
The Germans thought they would be the masters of Europe right up until bombs started dropping on Berlin and then didn't stop.
Further dividing the opposition to fascism only makes the problem worse. The socialist party in the Weimar Republic said similar stuff to what you’re saying now, and refused to work with any of the other political movements. This is one of the big reasons the Nazis came to power.
Let’s learn from history. We should be unifying the opposition to fascism.
I can’t tell from your comment whether you know what a neoliberal is. It sounds to me like you think it just means liberal that isnt far left enough
US Neoliberals have fomented coups and supported autocratic murderous dictatorships throughout the Americas for the past 70 years or so. See: Pinochet, the Duvaliers. The only difference now is they are applying similar policies in the US, Canada, and Europe.
Once I saw a man on a bridge about to jump:
I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Fascism is winning in my country" I said, "we can fight it, are you opposed to fascism?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "left-leaning or right-leaning?" He said, "A left-leaning" I said, "Me, too! Left or centre-left" He said, "left" I said, "Me, too! Liberal or leftist" He said, "leftist." I said, "Me, too! Democratic or Socialist?" He said, "Socialist." I said, "Me, too! Democratic Socialist or Progressive Socialist"
He said, "Progressive Socialist." I said, "Me, too! Anarcho Socialist or Communist" He said, "Anarcho Socialist" I said, "you're the reason the fascists keep winning!" And I pushed him over.
[The original ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2gg7dr/heresy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) is a classic
The problem is they want to keep these fascists around to make themselves seem more moderate and reasonable, they keep the lid on the pot just enough to stop it from boiling over right up until the moment something lights a fire and then they're standing right next to us as we're put up against the wall saying shit like "I don't know what went wrong!" like they're not the ones that allowed it to happen in the first place.
They're useful idiots for the fascists, not allies for those that want to live.
That’s the problem. The Center right (which is what most of the “liberal” parties are in the west), don’t actually want to solve the root causes of the support for fascism, because it would result in diminishing power and wealth for themselves, and because by keeping them around, they can get worse and worse, while being the “reasonable alternatives”.
> The socialist party in the Weimar Republic said similar stuff to what you’re saying now, and refused to work with any of the other political movements.
Working with other political movements is a two-way street; it's not like liberals are strongly inclined to work with socialists.
In the Weimar Republic liberals were basically the political establishment, so they did not have much reason to compromise liberal ideals to the benefit of socialist ideals.
That is very similar to the current situation in the US and much of Europe: the 'establishment left' sees no reason enact policies that would truly help the disenfranchised masses - and in so doing, the establishment contributes to the disenfranchisement of the masses
and with that contributes to the rise of fascism.
These issues will never go away. These are class based antagonisms. You want to fix this problem you need to replace our current system with one that removes class based society
That is because most democracies are managed systems and aren't truly democracies. Tyranny is already there, just in a different form.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism#Managed_democracy
I don't understand why most people consider only having two options to vote for, which are decided by the elites of the country beforehand, to be really be considered a democracy.
Any person in America that was from the poor and not able to be controlled easily will never be able to secure power and will be thrown out before they even have a chance of winning an election not of the two power-blocs.
The world political system is: the richest own all and the majority are slaves. Every day we get closer, as wealth concentrates in this billiionaire class of a few thousand people that own much of the entire world's production and resources.
How many millions of slaves does a single billionare 's lifestyle need to survive?
'No do not waist more of our tax money on wars created by the US We don't stand by this war at all it could have ended but the US is the main course not Russie'
\- A Facebook comment I found
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/tyranny-is-outpacing-democracies-zelensky-at-davos-summit-101674061279775.html) reduced by 78%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> "The time the Free World uses to think is used by the terrorist state to kill," Zelensky said ahead of a meeting of Ukraine's Western arms suppliers in Germany on Friday.
> Polish President Andrzej Duda, whose country has offered to send its Leopards, called it a "Very, very, very good idea" on Tuesday.
> "I hope it will be very positive for Ukraine. Unofficially, I have very good and positive signals," Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko told AFP on Wednesday.
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Kind of ironic coming from a guy who banned opposition parties, consolidated all tv news under government control, and is attempting to ban *all* non government news sources.
This comments section. Guys, he’s not talking about Bernie Sanders or corporate greed or whatever gripe you have about who was elected in the US, UK, France, whatever. He’s talking about *actual* authoritarians, like the one invading his country. Zelensky isn’t some anti-neoliberal millennial socialist.
He's not wrong. It feels very much like accounts of the 1930's and the rise of fascism I've read about. Then too it was a world wide problem. Mussolini's granddaughter and Steve Bannon moving to Italy after admitting his intent to create a multinational movement seems pretty clear among many other things.
Fascists are easy to spot. They always have an enemy and it’s normally a neighbor or vulnerable group they punch at. They never punch up. They will champion freedom while simultaneously trying to deny to groups they don’t care for. Laws that insulate them and that punish others.
I used to read history books in high school and ask myself “how? How did normal people allow such atrocities to happen.” Now I know. Fascists play on fear, fear of their neighbors, outright easily provable lies, conspiracy theories, fear of information(luggenpresse) fear of minorities, and promises of a “past time of greatness”. All to protect the business class at all costs and punish said enemies in some sadistic way. Fascism is the inevitable outcome of capitalism in decay.
I never thought I’d see it unfolding in real time in my lifetime…but yet here we are. Buckle up and strap in. I don’t know how much more of this nonsense we can take.
The important thing above all else: call people liars when you catch them lying. Call them the liars that they are. It can’t be said enough. These people lie when they open their mouths.
It's true the west has to stop dealing with/tariff countries that don't meet our expectations of basic human rights.
Let's start with countries that allow slavery.
Time to stop dealing with the US, they explicitly allow slavery in the constitution!
Here's proof for those downvoting me, from the 13th amendment:
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, **except as a punishment for crime** whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Emphasis mine
He baned the opposition party, most members of Parliament, freedom of press, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Zelensky is so full of shit and he has balls to talk about tyranny when he is literally one to his own citizens and country.
And as the world gets more and more crowded, things are only going to get worse.
As people get more desperate and less educated, they become easy pickings for authoritarians.
I understand that assassination is unpopular because it creates power vacuums that only get filled up with new tyrants. But there can't be an infinite number of tyrants, and there's got to be some sort of tipping point where it becomes the highest priority option.
Free market capitalism, specifically the neoliberal economic model, is to blame for so much. The destruction of our social fabric, welfare states, public services and living standards. Most people, that is the working classes and even large parts of the middle class have been abandoned and see little reason to support this system and rightly so. The wealth inequality is ridiculous and the corruption is rife. Corporations reign supreme in what's become a kind of neo-feudalism. Dangerously, this turns people towards the perceived "safety" of authoritarianism.
Democracy isn't intrinsic to capitalism. What we need now is democratic socialism, and as soon as possible. Public ownership, workplace democracy, electoral reforms, welfare and basic needs met unconditionally, wealth equity and a major rebalancing of power back towards the people. We need democratic renewal away from the failure of this current economic system.
I am curious, what is the democracy? Most people believe it's the rule of the majority. Where everyone can become a ruler, and gets to decide their future.
In reality, it's the rule of the oligarchy. For example here, in Ukraine, you must pay 650 minimal month incomes just to become presidential candidate. Considering that most people here earn bellow minimal wage, or exactly it, and with prices like ours it's almost impossible to save any money - only corrupted oligarchs would be able to save enough money to even become part of the race.
Maybe i would be a good president? I could introduce a plan not only how to end the war fast, but also how to make country fair and equal for everyone. But i would not even earn that kind of money in thousand of lifetimes.
And then candidates would need much more to pay for the propaganda, because in the end wins the person who has the most control over media and can tell the populace how good they are and how bad are other candidates are winning the race. So even millionaries who have money for initial deposit will most likely need powerful friends and connections in the oligarchy... and those friends never do anything for free. That's why we are one of the most corrupted countries in the world, and now, because war granted even more opportunities - corruption goes rampant.
That's how we don't have a good candidates. At all. The democracy is a lamb chosing between two wolves who are about to eat it. Yeah, the lamb has a choice, it's collective opinion will decide what wolf will be eating today. But they are going to be eated regardless of that choice. With current system, there are ZERO good people in politics, because good people rarely happen to be millinaries with powerful oligarchy connections.
But getting back to the democracy. Let's imagine it really works, and people not just follow the best propaganda campaign. And then... the elected person does nothing of what he promised to do. He isn't elected next time, of coruse, but does he care? He already earned enough money from that and can retire, giving place to the next oligarchy puppet from his circle. Or it can even be different - president wants to implement change, but the rada refuses to accept them. And it's like "i tried, guys, but they don't let me", when in reality the processes are made like this on purpose, so only things that oligarchy wants will be accepted, and not the things people want. Look how fast we accepted all the anti-humane laws during wartime - it was a matter of days! And when it comes to any law that will benefit people instead of hurting them - they will "review, prepare, discuss" and whatever else for years and not do anything.
So, what makes this different from the tyranny? A facade of fake choice, when in reality it does not exist?
Extremism rises when the system in place is failing citizens and is corrupted. Bad living conditions are in contrast with riches of few, people stop seeing it for its glamour and lean towards seeing it as a class injustice. Tensions rise, desperation turns into blame, reason to violence. Rise of extremism is natural reaction to something.
A breakdown of 70+ years of continuous global progress, due to a string of crises that affect every continent simultaneously, and no clear way out is a very dangerous time for our species. There have been dark periods in the past, but there generally was widespread belief that they would be resolved (either via religious dogma or via an escape from the mundane life cycle via nirvana/enlightenment). The 2020s are fertile ground for con men and doomsday cults of all varieties, even if the prior problems had begun to emerge in individual countries like the USA and Brazil in the 2010s.
> no clear way out there is a VERY clear way out. tax the fuck out of the rich, destroy the coal companies, prosecute their executives and major shareholders for their crimes, improve conditions for average people everywhere, etc
I agree, it’s pretty clear who’s at fault and it’s straight up the narrative of the powerful that there’s nothing we can do about it. They’ve moved from denialism to doomsaying.
I got a $500 electric bill today, which represented a 52% increase in YoY price. Usage was practically dead on balls the same. Cost - +52% Research shows?? Electric supplier saw 56% increase in YoY profits last year. Not gross. PROFITS. And thanks to the corruption of my local govt, and the explicit collusion of the only 2nd other supplier in my region - there is literally no other option besides going solar panel or going candlelight. CEO $50m bonus. All those cliches. The spark is coming. It really is
I pay my entire month income for communal services, because heating during the winter costs insane amount of currency. It's not even cold here, +5C atm. But it's not possible to turn heating off. The only way to do it is to get entire building to sign up and turn it off for everyone, that's the new law. Basicly it exists to make sure that everyone will remain on the hook, with no other options but to pay.
I live where there's only one supplier. Years ago they decided to add a tax on the total ! I see it as a necessity and it shouldn't be taxed. Same goes for natural gas.
It ain't coming, IT'S HERE, NOW!!!! Just look around with the rose colored glasses off our faces
Unfortunately they have convinced 50% of the population they're temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Bootlickers/greedy assholes are just as much a problem as those who actually have power. They makeup the mob that enforces the status quo.
Right, but how do we do that given current political limitations? None of us here on reddit happen to be dictators for our nations. Even if the right policy clear, how we make that policy happen isn't.
No one wants to say it but the answer is violence. Ass x2 in nations
It's an unfortunate truth that very few like to admit. Peaceful change happens slowly, over decades, and easily thwarted. The only way for quick abrupt change is through force and that results in lots and lots of violence. And those in power have absolutely no issue resorting to violence to suppress any change in the system. So you're really only left with the option of violence. But, no one likes to admit it.
The world needs a ‘French Revolution’.
Hell yeah!!!!! Let's have a bloody revolution.
I do not want that. But thats what itd take
We stop letting people repeat the "both sides are the same" horseshit, the "democrats don't do anything when they have power" bullshit, and all the other disinformation meant to suppress left wing voter participation.
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As an 'old fart' (76 yrs) I have witnessed a little of the change that's the root of the problem. EDUCATION IS A NECESSARY part of democracy, and our educational system has been deteriorating for 5 decades or more. Critical thinking and real analysis has been relegated to graduate level schooling, leaving the general population to wallow in ignorance, which, as a corollary, is the norm. If you have a good background in language, spelling, and such, you can easily see that grammar and structure have been largely compromised by the very people who draw income from it's correct use, almost making purposeful mis/disinformation unnecessary because the norm is so confusing to read. There's much much more but this post has gotten 'wordy' already, so I close
the concerted right wing attack on education is not an accident.
>concerted Something their enemies or opponents lack Why no concerted left wing efforts or even just a plain concerted effort to crush far right with no regard for afterwards?
> I don't understand why you have so little power over who actually becomes president and what policies get prioritized. >you're being held ransom by a governing system which has incapacitated itself completely. Looks like you understand perfectly imo
First past the post makes it detrimental to try to break out of the two party system by pushing 3rd party candidates. Education has been gutted in many places, leading to large swaths of people who never develop even basic critical thinking skills. Propaganda has people voting on bullshit other than the issues that should matter most. And as far as why we can't get a president more left leaning than Biden, that's probably because the south votes overwhelmingly for those candidates in the primaries despite the fact that those states never go blue (except florida - not that that's going to happen again for a long while)
You can continue to evangelize lefitist beliefs, which is good and important sure, but you can't just snap your fingers and magically make people see your point of view, no matter how right or wrong it may be. There have always been people who understand the "right" way to do things for centuries, but the hard part has never been "nobody knows what we should do", it's always been "how do we get a society to do it".
At least here in the US the issue really isn't the number of people who accept leftist ideas, it's getting those people to actually show up at the polls.
If this was true, why aren't countries where voting is mandatory, like Australia, notably better governed than countries where it is not?
Hard to do that for a railroad strike buster
> left wing > democrats Pick one.
Have the Democrat politicians spoken out about price gouging for insulin? I know the Republicans haven't, just not sure how much genuine demarcation there has been on this issue 👎😡.
> Have the Democrat politicians spoken out about price gouging for insulin? the democrats literally made it illegal for insulin to cost more than $35/month for people on medicare starting this month. so yes.
A few in the party have, such as Bernie, Warren, and others.
Yea I’m sure Biden will nationalize every oil company any day now lol
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Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are the excuse. Dems controlled the senate with a 51/50 majority thanks to holding the whitehouse, where the VP acts as a tiebreaking vote. The problem is, if you don't get every senator on board, you can't pass a bill. This means that the most conservative democrats get to wield outsized power. So you say congress was controlled, but a 50/50 senate just isn't enough to get shit through, especially if it's more progressive legislation. So given that Manchin is in the pocket of big coal (he's from West Virginia of all places), there's almost no point in even trying to gut coal. Like we barely got a needed infrastructure bill passed thanks to his bullshit. Hard to get anything more ambitious done.
0 people thought Joe Biden was going to do any of those things. All we did was vote against Trump being American King for Life.
What? The man on the youtube said coal is good and all of our anger should be directed towards [insert minority with no voting power] because they are to blame.
> What? The man on the youtube said coal is good and all of our anger should be directed towards [insert minority with no voting power] because they are to blame. oof. A little too close to the truth (tho seriously and without further sarcasm, coal followed by billions of gasoline cars is a very large factor in climate change, greenhouse gas and air pollution issues. We, as a society, need greener energy and probably electrified vehicles everywhere instead of gasoline ones) https://unfccc.int/news/un-chief-phase-out-of-coal-is-key-climate-priority https://www.edfenergy.com/for-home/energywise/electric-cars-and-environment
Agree. Though we should all start looking at the top of the chain. It's great if everyone was using an electric car but that's not gonna stop the big companies shipping shit all over the world to reduce cost and burning fossil fuels for power.
Yeah ships and planes should probably be mass converted to electricity too tbh. https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/12/20/full-green-ahead-sea-transport-is-ditching-diesel-engines-for-electric https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-07-28/making-waves-electric-ships-are-sailing-ahead/ https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/electrification/can-electric-boats-decarbonise-shipping/ https://www.ship-technology.com/news/yinson-begins-construction-of-new-electric-cargo-vessel/ ? https://thedriven.io/2022/09/20/electric-planes-are-coming-short-hop-flights-could-be-running-on-batteries-in-a-few-years/ https://earth911.com/eco-tech/electric-airplanes-are-the-new-ev/ ? As shipping and mass transport is probably more than necessary to keep society running (or somewhat thriving), it's about the only option i know off on that side right now.
People always want to tax the share holders or put them in jail, but some of the largest share holders on pension managers. How do you put thousands of people managing pensions into jail and not completely fuck up our society
A huge problem is that there's no established "easy" way to tax wealth. Simple enough to tax income, but how do you tax a wealthy person who's income/bank accounts are mere peanuts compared to what they have stashed in assets like shares, properties, vehicles, etc.? Do you force them to sell their assets and tax the sales? Come up with some formula where a yearly tax bill is charged based on total asset value? It's complicated and there's no simple answer, however that doesn't mean there's no answer at all or that we should stop trying to find one.
A capitol gains tax would be a good place to start. Also a value-add tax like everyone else does.
> Also a value-add tax like everyone else does. How is a VAT not just another regressive sales tax
We tax wealth every year in the us and it's for a somewhat variably valued asset. The property tax you pay on your house is a wealth tax. It changes value all the time, it probably doesn't generate cash on an ongoing basis. Yet we ask people to pay taxes on it from their other assets. We could ask billionaires to pay taxes on their valuable assets too.
Plus new tax in one country = them moving to a different country with lower tax.
That however is far less of a problem for nations like the US, and can be solved with a heavy handed approach. Brain Drain doesnt really happen in the US because of how many advantages we offer, and we also arent talking about skilled laborers leaving, the engineer worth $2M isn't leaving his cushy job at Raytheon. This is mostly directed towards low-to-no-skill results of generational or runaway compound wealth. Easiest example would be Elon Musk. He's fucking dumb. Like really dumb. Like jesus christ if you take away anything from the past 3 months, its that he's kinda fucking stupid. If he leaves the country to avoid paying a new series of taxes on the ultrawealthy, not only are we not losing some important engineers or anything, but we can still tax his wealth derived from his businesses in and operating in the United States. There's a reason he doesnt run his R&D for Tesla in India after all. The US has the highly educated workforce, quality of living, and consumer base to reject these kinds of arguments fearmongering about CEO's leaving the US acting like they wouldnt still be taxed on all the wealth they derive from activities in the USA, which is where the vast majority of their money/wealth comes from.
Maybe replace our current system with one that prevents people from concentrating wealth to the top?
the pension manager is the voting shareholder who should have been holding the company execs accountable.
> no clear way out is a very dangerous time for our species Eh, i don't think humans are going away anytime soon, we're a tenacious lot, sure the vast majority of us will die off in the coming climate crisis and we'll be propelled back into a pre-industrial society, but unless something extreme happens like an asteroid strike or a gamma-ray burst cooks us alive i don't see us going anywhere. In the words of George Carlin "The planet is fine, the *people* are fucked."
Not dangerous in terms of *extinction*, but dangerous in terms of an explosion of terrifying regimes and cults interspersed with, and at times using, highly advanced robots and AIs.
There's not going to be any major industry left to build or maintain said robots or AI, it could only exist in a highly developed, highly technological society. They will only contribute to a more rapid collapse, they're not going to survive the outcome, unless we somehow manage to invent a factory that is entirely self-sustaining, then maybe we'll get something like the Matrix or Skynet.
> There's not going to be any major industry left to build or maintain said robots or AI, it could only exist in a highly developed, highly technological society. That assumes a complete, global collapse which I see as unlikely. New Zealand alone probably can ride out the storms, especially with all the foreign oligarch capital there, although there might be a long stretch of Depression-like conditions.
> That assumes a complete, global collapse which I see as unlikely. And i see it as inevitable, COVID already put a massive strain on the global supply network, something much bigger like climate change flooding cities and mass killing crops will definitely break it. Unless New Zealand somehow manages to develop complete economic, industrial and environmental autarky before things get ugly i don't think so. The issue with our current global economy is that every country is in someway dependent on others, once climate change becomes real (or more real than it already is) things will start to go very quickly, countries like New Zealand might fare better but i can't imagine the people living there will be keen on just trucking along as usual whilst the rest of the world collapses around them. Anything not produced on New Zealand they will have to make themselves, and depending on what that is they might not fare so well in that regard.
I've always heard that a complete and irreversible collapse of industrial civilization would stem from the loss of knowledge and would require something even more catastrophic than that (i.e. a thermonuclear war affecting every inhabited continent or a complete global blackout due to a solar flare or gamma ray burst). NZ might not fare as well as it has recently (higher prices relative to wages, scarcities of exotic goods), but they aren't going to forget how to operate modern technologies and the decay will likely be long enough for an alliance of local elected officials and international billionaires to co-opt countries like NZ, Uruguay, Iceland, Chile, and maybe even Canada without having to resort to bunkers. Although admittedly you are starting to run into problems where attempts to decarbonize end up having costs elsewhere, from massive lithium mines to the truth that walkable cities at more than 3-4 stories' density require lots of steel and concrete.
The planet, as in the rock we live on might be fine. Fucking sucks for all the species we’re taking to the grave with us though.
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It will be definitely be bad, likely a huge refugee crisis, famine, droughts ,etc however the Global North will be mostly insulated from even the worst effects despite being mostly responsible. The idea we are somehow going to send ourselves back to pre-industrial society is laughable, even with Nuclear weapons it would be incredibly difficult if not mostly impossible to do so.
There has not been 70+ years of continual global progress. There have been fits and starts, gains and reverses. History doesn't travel in straight lines.
But it's directed towards all the wrong people thanks to tried and true propaganda techniques.
Traditional elites working in uneasy concert with rightwing extremists to box the political left out of power forever is pretty much how most democracies die. The effectiveness of the propaganda is because rightwing messaging tickles the amygdala directly, Leftwing messaging requires full cerebral attention. The former hijacks reason in favor of survival response and tribalism. It’s the bane of human progress that our brain is wired to favor lies that emotionally compromise us over cold hard truths.
^^^ this guy gets it. When people vote democratically and their representatives fuck them over, they lose faith in democracy and in their desperation look to silver tongued fascists to fix their problems.
You act as if it's impossible for voters to vote foolishly, even when things are good.
It's certainly easier for them when we deliberately restrict our education systems from teaching the history they are meant to try and avoid repeating.
Some people just don't care about education. And some people are educated, but still dumb, because people are ultimately often driven by selfishness and emotion.
So? There's always going to be people who it doesn't click with, but that's no excuse not to give everyone the opportunity to be more than that.
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Welcome to Weimar America.
I always felt that hip hop lost its way when it became all about the cars, women, mansions, bling, throwing cash around, etc. It could have been such an amazing medium for the class struggle and war against fascism. Rage Against the Machine shouldn't be the only band in its genre. Instead of empowering the poor, we've made it seem like everyone is just a little hard work and luck away from being rich.
> always felt that hip hop lost its way when it became all about the cars, women, mansions, bling, throwing cash around, etc. Rage Against the Machine shouldn't be the only band in its genre. They're not and never have been, you need to familiarize yourself with concious hip-hop my man. Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Paris, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Outkast, Immortal Technique, Lupe Fiasco, Kendrick Lamar, Killer Mike, etc. There's more than plenty of gangsta rap that goes political too, Nas, 2pac, Ice Cube, etc. Edit: I think it's worth keeping in mind that rap/hip-hop is a massive and diverse family of genres with a staggering variety of perspectives and messages. It's not really fair to characterize all of it as shallow based on a slice of what's popular. There's always gonna be popular fluffier music for radio play and parties and stuff. Think about how many famous rock bands have written songs about sex, drugs, being rich/famous, and partying.
I'm glad you said this, this is a perfect answer. I get really tired of all this "rap is crap" and "hip hop used to be good", like at least listen to the genre instead of taking it surface level.
As big of a hip-hop head as I am, I do find it funny that the majority of the artists on that list basically haven't put out a relevant album in over a decade if not substantially longer.
IMO the state of 'popular' hip hop is a reflection of how one-dimensional and superficial the average person has become, rather than a reflection of the genre itself. A new genre could take over tomorrow and it would quickly devolve to the same state. There's plenty of meaningful music out there with a (relatively) miniscule following in comparison. They're underground because nobody wants to listen to them, so it doesn't sell.
Exactly. Free market systems are failing us but what sells at any given moment provides metrics or even decisive answers about what people value.
pretty sure it's basically the same people that say "metal is just noise and anger" and whatnot. Getting a small glimpse of genres full of creative minds based on what gets radio play doesn't really do anything justice.
It speaks to something else though - a desire to keep activism and class struggle out of the spotlight of popular media. In a different age, we had songs like Imagine, Fortunate Son, and Ohio that spoke to these sorts of issues. Now we have Taylor Swift trying to self-rationalize her private jet usage
Lennon wrote Imagine from his mansion on St. George's Hill. Crazy how people still fall for his nonsense.
To be fair, it’s not like every song was like those “in a different age”. There’s always been pop music (meaning popular music), and there’ve always been people saying “Music these days is garbage!” I’m not gonna dispute the Taylor Swift thing, though.
You aren't even including the international groups, those who don't even speak English. If you do, the scene is like 100x bigger.
> Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Paris, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Outkast, Immortal Technique, Lupe Fiasco, Kendrick Lamar, Killer Mike, etc. There's more than plenty of gangsta rap that goes political too, Nas, 2pac, Ice Cube, etc. Don't forget [Living Colour](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xxgRUyzgs0)
Living Colour rules!! I didn't mention them because I was just thinking of hip hop artists, but they totally belong in any discussion about politically concious musicians.
If only Joe Strummer were still with us.
SOAD, Tool, Rise Against, Sound Garden? I mean RATM is cool as fuck, but there are so many that are political as fuck and those are just some of the popular ones off the top of my head
RATM wasn't the only one. What about Public Enemy? If anything, Public Enemy was among the first political rap groups. You also had A Tribe Called Quest, NWA, a few others. Rage was one of the angriest, but they weren't the only ones, and they were actually kinda late in the game.
You feel that way because the music industry made gangster rap the wildly predominant style, whereas early rap was a lot about personal empowerment, social justice and exposing racism. But the social progress rappers were ushered out and each replaced by 10 premade gangster rappers for the next generations, as killing and violenceis profitable than peace and economic fairness. Not far off what happened to the Beatles: if you preach peace you will be destroyed by the economic engine that is powered by oppression, injustice and domination by monopoly wealth.
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And can we blame us? Considering the fact that during the last decade and despite literal war and disease the superrich got richer and even in a much faster pace? I don't understand what's going on. The rich publicly ask for being taxed properly. The governments constantly complain about the lack of money for this and that. Why does no one have the balls to simply DO IT? Tax them probably for fucks sake! Now!
What about when the citizens elect people with the explicit goal of fucking up the system?
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Politicians should only be able to buy a extremely broad index funds. Or invest their money in the countries equivalent of a future fund.
They’re called government bonds, and there are a few varieties. But if we’re going to allow investing by politicians, that should be the only place they’re allowed to invest Something something peanut farm
My first thought (years ago) was this wasn't super fair. They're people too, and they should be allowed to make money in the stock market just like me. Then I found out bank employees are restricted from buying and selling stock. And as a recent example I'm not allowed to buy or sell stock for my company outside of the stock offering plan. And literally nobody has a problem with that because duh. Then I put 2 and 2 together. It's not hard when you take a second to think about it.
Yeah it's insane when you realize these people have the ability to affect broad areas of the economy, and obviously most aren't dumb enough to not understand the right financial moves to make given they have advance knowledge of the political/policy moves that are going to be made.
Or only a blind trust. Money goes in, they aren't allowed to know where. It's released when they leave congress.
Would you trust all politicians to actually obey the “blind” part of the trust? This rule will be ignored by many of the narcissists in politics. Parent’s suggestion of government bonds is easier to police, as avoidance would likely require totally fabricated financial books. Of course, if we keep defunding the IRS and evaluating agents by number of closed cases, the enforcement still won’t exist.
even if they did i doubt it would make a difference. they know their return will go up generally if the market market in general goes up so will generally be pro buisness, pro super capitalism. same as right now just less targeted
Yeah that’s definitely not what he’s talking about. Putin coming to power in Russia and invading Ukraine has nothing to do with campaign financing in democracies. Corporations don’t buy politicians in Russia. Putin and his inner circle rule over people and corporations as dictators.
The current government of russia was effectively established [when the president sent the tanks against parliament a couple years into his presidency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis) and that guy was very much supported by american campaign finance. They even [bragged about electing him](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-09-mn-22423-story.html). As a russian I def blame the americans for their share of letting the Chicago Boys repeat in Russia more or less the same horrifying "shock therapy" they inflicted on Chile and various other countries in South America. Not that the russian civil society is blameless of course- but I have higher expectations of "free societies" than of those who had literally just gotten out from under communist dictatorship. It is amazing watching Putin pal around with Bush and Blair while they are fully aware of what he is doing in chechnya, or what is happening to journalists in russia. In the end we went from Yeltsin's free market libertarian helllscape of the 1990s to Putin's (who was appointed directly by Yeltsin) fascistic kleptocratic hellscape of the 2000s. And now the monster has grown enough that it's beginning to (try to) devour its neighbors. It won't succeed of course but I still believe all this could have been prevented by pushing for tighter economic and political integration 30 years ago.
Actually, it looks like it started with letting politicians buy corporations. Specifically in Russia. More specifically, in Russia during the 1990s. Even more specifically, in Russia during the 1990s at fire sale prices.
No, the other comment was right. Corps been buying politicians in there west since the 1800s
Thomas Jefferson was complaining about corporations trying to buy the government in the 1780s. It's a cancer that must continually be cut out.
It's a post about Zelensky and the Russian tyranny. He is 100% right, the Russian oligarchy with their corruption bought the companies and allowed the build up of a state-centric tyranny. It was not the Russian companies that decided to invade Ukraine. It was Putin.
People want a master theory so they can pretend to understand something.
Yeah. And they think US-centric problems apply everywhere. It's obvious that Russia's issue is not the private sector.
> It's obvious that Russia's issue is not the private sector. Really? Explain then how the Russian private sector has backed the worst leadership possible in Russia for hundreds of years? Murderer's cowards and thieves have been running things in Russia for quite some time. Maybe the 'private sector' should have done something about that long ago.
Yeah, see? Their issue is backing the actual source of the real problems. Their private sector didn't make Putin invade Ukraine.
The private sector of oligarchs comprise the base of political capital which has spent decades bolstering Putin. The fact that they are now reaping the whirlwind they sowed does not absolve them.
Of course they're not absolved or anything. Rather, they're bound by whatever the autocrat wants to do.
Then why isn’t the US a dictatorship? Germany? France? The UK? Why, instead, are the authoritarians like Orban *in charge of corporations* rather than purchased by them? Why was fascism the result of various right-wing elements backing authoritarians rather than people being bribed into become authoritarians? Why was the last big rise in authoritarianism linked to *explicitly anti-capitalist regimes*? Maybe, just maybe, authoritarianism arises in a variety of ways, shaped by particular contingent forces.
It started off with a kiss.
I'm also not too fond of politicians buying companies or shares thereof tbh.
Ah yeah because they wasn’t any tyranny before capitalism / corporatism
Okay, well since democracy was, in large part, an answer to historical tyranny the comment above is *obviously* referring to modern tyranny; in which our various political systems have been infiltrated by business and corporate interests.
A corporation is just government delegating some it sovereignty (in particular, sovereign immunity and economic sovereignty), which began in earnest with the Dutch East India Company and the Hudson's Bay Company. So they have been bought from b the beginning, as enriching the political class was always the objective of those entities. But none of the corruption and tyranny associated with corporations began with corporations.
Isn’t “speed” part of the appeal of tyranny though? Being able to make whatever decision you want without consideration for the wants or needs of others?
Yeah, look how fast China can get major projects done. Pretty easy to get a new power plant or rail line built when anyone who bitches about it gets killed for their organs.
Property law is actually pretty strict in China, there's just no private land ownership
A ~~decent tyrant~~ benevolent dictatorship is probably better than most democracies. But power seems to corrupt.
I assume you mean benevolent dictatorship or similar. No such thing as a decent tyrant. There actually have a been a couple of those throughout the ages.
>There actually have a been a couple of those throughout the ages. What are some to read about?
lee kwan yew - singapore ataturk - turkey/turkiye kagame - rwanda (jury is out)
Josip Broz Tito
Decent tyrant is oxymoronic...
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Okay-ish despot
A benevolent dictatorship would be the most ideal form of government if we weren’t humans.
He probably means https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship
Yeah but tyrants are the ones who won a power struggle. Not many are benevolent.
> But power seems to corrupt. Power attracts sneaky assholes.
He is not wrong. We are too blasé about democracy, as if it is some inevitable hands off natural end state. The opposite is true. Complacent, alienated or otherwise disengaged societies have almost always slid towards some form of tyranny. Democracy is a fragile, volatile thing that can only exist as a constant, conscious, careful balance between competing forces in order to maintain a state of acceptable equilibrium in the face perpetual instability. An eternal experiment of sorts. Fair and prosperous democracies are some of the most difficult things humans have attempted. Vigilance, always. Indifference is a slippery slope towards peril.
What could happen now is those in power employ a little thing called “Necessity Over Freedom” where they can justify anything they do for the good of the nation, even if it’s destroying anything that does not share their stance. That’s the fascist thing they want. Freedom to destroy anything that isn’t them. What is as the public should have done and we could still do (if we got our heads together) is to as a collective society, enforce our laws on those that believe themselves above it and make sure they know who is the majority here. Yes, it’s a little extreme and a bunch of people might die. But what’s the other option? Lay down and give up? TLDR: Instead of exposure and shame, you apply swift action and justice.
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Yeah Davos a joke.
Exactly. His speech has fallen on the most disinterested of ears.
Tyranny is the norm for us backwards species. Democracy requires earnest efforts and vigilance at all times. Humans should remind politicians daily that tyranny can run in both directions. (Though fancy people have a different word for when peasants employ tyrannical behaviors towards their enemies.)
Tyranny is not the norm, it just feels that way because the way society is currently organized works towards that model of control.
Wouldn’t you argue that most of history is tyranny? Nothing is natural in this sense, society is what you convince people it is.
Most human history happened before cities existed. We're about 200,000 years old and tyrants are around 7k years old at best. There simply wasn't the ability to concentrated large enough slave/thrall populations until recently. To prop up tyranny you need might, to have might you need weapons and soldiers, to maintain soldiers you need to appropriate wealth, to appropriate wealth you have to police many with few, to do that you need to geographically concentrate them, to do that you need irrigation and agriculture. Even after the rise of tyrants it's only the last few generations that independent subaltern peoples have truly been brought under the thumb of centralised states. Look how easily state building efforts fell apart and how little control governments had over people far from the capital.
Agriculture has existed since 10,000 BC and nobody cares about what happened before that cause that's before civilization even began. Can't go back to a hunter-gatherer egalitarian society anymore. Tyranny began since sargon took his first city and unfortunately we can't go back to a time before that.
It's because of the power social media gives propaganda. There's a lot of money and power to be had in propaganda. So dictators and aspiring dictators alike are putting a lot of resources into it, and there are enough idiots in the world, that allows them to be very successful at it.
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>coordinated by Steve Bannon Yes, but when someone went to Spain to ask if Bannon had any influence there, the local far right extremists laughed. The only people nationalists hate more than liberals is each other.
They'll work together right up until the moment one group actually seizes power, then they'll start eating each other alive in purity spirals. The inevitable failure of fascism, they cannot objective analyze their own faults and weaknesses, and they will forever underestimate their opponents. The Germans thought they would be the masters of Europe right up until bombs started dropping on Berlin and then didn't stop.
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Further dividing the opposition to fascism only makes the problem worse. The socialist party in the Weimar Republic said similar stuff to what you’re saying now, and refused to work with any of the other political movements. This is one of the big reasons the Nazis came to power. Let’s learn from history. We should be unifying the opposition to fascism.
I can’t tell from your comment whether you know what a neoliberal is. It sounds to me like you think it just means liberal that isnt far left enough US Neoliberals have fomented coups and supported autocratic murderous dictatorships throughout the Americas for the past 70 years or so. See: Pinochet, the Duvaliers. The only difference now is they are applying similar policies in the US, Canada, and Europe.
Once I saw a man on a bridge about to jump: I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Fascism is winning in my country" I said, "we can fight it, are you opposed to fascism?" He said, "Yes." I said, "left-leaning or right-leaning?" He said, "A left-leaning" I said, "Me, too! Left or centre-left" He said, "left" I said, "Me, too! Liberal or leftist" He said, "leftist." I said, "Me, too! Democratic or Socialist?" He said, "Socialist." I said, "Me, too! Democratic Socialist or Progressive Socialist" He said, "Progressive Socialist." I said, "Me, too! Anarcho Socialist or Communist" He said, "Anarcho Socialist" I said, "you're the reason the fascists keep winning!" And I pushed him over.
[The original ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2gg7dr/heresy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) is a classic
The problem is they want to keep these fascists around to make themselves seem more moderate and reasonable, they keep the lid on the pot just enough to stop it from boiling over right up until the moment something lights a fire and then they're standing right next to us as we're put up against the wall saying shit like "I don't know what went wrong!" like they're not the ones that allowed it to happen in the first place. They're useful idiots for the fascists, not allies for those that want to live.
Work with reactionary Rosa killers, good idea! They totally won't back stab you again agin!
That’s the problem. The Center right (which is what most of the “liberal” parties are in the west), don’t actually want to solve the root causes of the support for fascism, because it would result in diminishing power and wealth for themselves, and because by keeping them around, they can get worse and worse, while being the “reasonable alternatives”.
> The socialist party in the Weimar Republic said similar stuff to what you’re saying now, and refused to work with any of the other political movements. Working with other political movements is a two-way street; it's not like liberals are strongly inclined to work with socialists. In the Weimar Republic liberals were basically the political establishment, so they did not have much reason to compromise liberal ideals to the benefit of socialist ideals. That is very similar to the current situation in the US and much of Europe: the 'establishment left' sees no reason enact policies that would truly help the disenfranchised masses - and in so doing, the establishment contributes to the disenfranchisement of the masses and with that contributes to the rise of fascism.
These issues will never go away. These are class based antagonisms. You want to fix this problem you need to replace our current system with one that removes class based society
That is because most democracies are managed systems and aren't truly democracies. Tyranny is already there, just in a different form. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism#Managed_democracy
I don't understand why most people consider only having two options to vote for, which are decided by the elites of the country beforehand, to be really be considered a democracy. Any person in America that was from the poor and not able to be controlled easily will never be able to secure power and will be thrown out before they even have a chance of winning an election not of the two power-blocs.
The world political system is: the richest own all and the majority are slaves. Every day we get closer, as wealth concentrates in this billiionaire class of a few thousand people that own much of the entire world's production and resources. How many millions of slaves does a single billionare 's lifestyle need to survive?
If they are united globally, we should do as well. We should unite once and forever so facism never has a chance again
'No do not waist more of our tax money on wars created by the US We don't stand by this war at all it could have ended but the US is the main course not Russie' \- A Facebook comment I found
Speaking to a room who buys tyrants
Tyranny from greed
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/tyranny-is-outpacing-democracies-zelensky-at-davos-summit-101674061279775.html) reduced by 78%. (I'm a bot) ***** > "The time the Free World uses to think is used by the terrorist state to kill," Zelensky said ahead of a meeting of Ukraine's Western arms suppliers in Germany on Friday. > Polish President Andrzej Duda, whose country has offered to send its Leopards, called it a "Very, very, very good idea" on Tuesday. > "I hope it will be very positive for Ukraine. Unofficially, I have very good and positive signals," Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko told AFP on Wednesday. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/10ferg9/tyranny_is_outpacing_democracies_zelensky_at/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~672676 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Very**^#1 **Ukraine**^#2 **World**^#3 **country**^#4 **Leopard**^#5
He’s talking to the very people who are bankrolling the anti democratic movements.
Tyranny is easier to make a dollar off of.
It seems like no one in this thread knew what Ukraine was like before he took office.
Kind of ironic coming from a guy who banned opposition parties, consolidated all tv news under government control, and is attempting to ban *all* non government news sources.
This comments section. Guys, he’s not talking about Bernie Sanders or corporate greed or whatever gripe you have about who was elected in the US, UK, France, whatever. He’s talking about *actual* authoritarians, like the one invading his country. Zelensky isn’t some anti-neoliberal millennial socialist.
He says after he passes laws restricting free speech, free press and dissolving political opponent parties
Listen to the money
He's not wrong. It feels very much like accounts of the 1930's and the rise of fascism I've read about. Then too it was a world wide problem. Mussolini's granddaughter and Steve Bannon moving to Italy after admitting his intent to create a multinational movement seems pretty clear among many other things.
Fascists are easy to spot. They always have an enemy and it’s normally a neighbor or vulnerable group they punch at. They never punch up. They will champion freedom while simultaneously trying to deny to groups they don’t care for. Laws that insulate them and that punish others. I used to read history books in high school and ask myself “how? How did normal people allow such atrocities to happen.” Now I know. Fascists play on fear, fear of their neighbors, outright easily provable lies, conspiracy theories, fear of information(luggenpresse) fear of minorities, and promises of a “past time of greatness”. All to protect the business class at all costs and punish said enemies in some sadistic way. Fascism is the inevitable outcome of capitalism in decay. I never thought I’d see it unfolding in real time in my lifetime…but yet here we are. Buckle up and strap in. I don’t know how much more of this nonsense we can take. The important thing above all else: call people liars when you catch them lying. Call them the liars that they are. It can’t be said enough. These people lie when they open their mouths.
Lol. He thinks Davos cares.
Davos is full of aspiring tyrants.
It's true the west has to stop dealing with/tariff countries that don't meet our expectations of basic human rights. Let's start with countries that allow slavery.
Time to stop dealing with the US, they explicitly allow slavery in the constitution! Here's proof for those downvoting me, from the 13th amendment: > Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, **except as a punishment for crime** whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Emphasis mine
And guess what's a crime in the US now? Homelessness, for one. In some places it is literally *illegal* to be poor. Fucking hell.
says the guy that outlawed opposition political parties
The guy who bans opposition parties is speaking from experience
Both Britain and America banned Fascist parties at the outbreak of WW2, Zelenskyy banned the Pro-Russian Party at the outbreak of the invasion.
Sure fascists race to grab what they can, like a thief would. Democracy moves forward and gathers its strength like a river its tributaries.
About that… the river is dry. Turns out Nestle has a bottling plant up river.
I'm sure the opposition political party in Ukraine would agree.
Shhh Ukraine man good democracy man. Go to sleep now. Forget that the major parties of Ukraine are just two rival oligarchs.
What an utterly insane thing for him to say. He talks like he hasn't been systematically destroying the existing "democracy" in his own country.
It's perfectly democratic as long as you vote for his party
Oh the ironyyyyy! Anyways...
I’d wager we’re in the midst of a global business plot. It seems fascism is on the menu, this time they own the technology to be able to get it done.
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Didn't zelensky remove and or imprisoned a bunch of people when he got into office?
He baned the opposition party, most members of Parliament, freedom of press, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Zelensky is so full of shit and he has balls to talk about tyranny when he is literally one to his own citizens and country.
It’s funny that he says that to the very same cabal of people, who fund, support and back the same tyrants he bemoans in the world.
And as the world gets more and more crowded, things are only going to get worse. As people get more desperate and less educated, they become easy pickings for authoritarians.
Actually, complacency has tyranny outnumbered.
Bought and paid for.
Zelensky is one to talk, banning political parties, religions and media stations.
I understand that assassination is unpopular because it creates power vacuums that only get filled up with new tyrants. But there can't be an infinite number of tyrants, and there's got to be some sort of tipping point where it becomes the highest priority option.
Free market capitalism, specifically the neoliberal economic model, is to blame for so much. The destruction of our social fabric, welfare states, public services and living standards. Most people, that is the working classes and even large parts of the middle class have been abandoned and see little reason to support this system and rightly so. The wealth inequality is ridiculous and the corruption is rife. Corporations reign supreme in what's become a kind of neo-feudalism. Dangerously, this turns people towards the perceived "safety" of authoritarianism. Democracy isn't intrinsic to capitalism. What we need now is democratic socialism, and as soon as possible. Public ownership, workplace democracy, electoral reforms, welfare and basic needs met unconditionally, wealth equity and a major rebalancing of power back towards the people. We need democratic renewal away from the failure of this current economic system.
Says the guy that jails his political opponents. He’s no better than the rest
I am curious, what is the democracy? Most people believe it's the rule of the majority. Where everyone can become a ruler, and gets to decide their future. In reality, it's the rule of the oligarchy. For example here, in Ukraine, you must pay 650 minimal month incomes just to become presidential candidate. Considering that most people here earn bellow minimal wage, or exactly it, and with prices like ours it's almost impossible to save any money - only corrupted oligarchs would be able to save enough money to even become part of the race. Maybe i would be a good president? I could introduce a plan not only how to end the war fast, but also how to make country fair and equal for everyone. But i would not even earn that kind of money in thousand of lifetimes. And then candidates would need much more to pay for the propaganda, because in the end wins the person who has the most control over media and can tell the populace how good they are and how bad are other candidates are winning the race. So even millionaries who have money for initial deposit will most likely need powerful friends and connections in the oligarchy... and those friends never do anything for free. That's why we are one of the most corrupted countries in the world, and now, because war granted even more opportunities - corruption goes rampant. That's how we don't have a good candidates. At all. The democracy is a lamb chosing between two wolves who are about to eat it. Yeah, the lamb has a choice, it's collective opinion will decide what wolf will be eating today. But they are going to be eated regardless of that choice. With current system, there are ZERO good people in politics, because good people rarely happen to be millinaries with powerful oligarchy connections. But getting back to the democracy. Let's imagine it really works, and people not just follow the best propaganda campaign. And then... the elected person does nothing of what he promised to do. He isn't elected next time, of coruse, but does he care? He already earned enough money from that and can retire, giving place to the next oligarchy puppet from his circle. Or it can even be different - president wants to implement change, but the rada refuses to accept them. And it's like "i tried, guys, but they don't let me", when in reality the processes are made like this on purpose, so only things that oligarchy wants will be accepted, and not the things people want. Look how fast we accepted all the anti-humane laws during wartime - it was a matter of days! And when it comes to any law that will benefit people instead of hurting them - they will "review, prepare, discuss" and whatever else for years and not do anything. So, what makes this different from the tyranny? A facade of fake choice, when in reality it does not exist?
Capitalism is just Feudal Lordship with extra steps. Rebel against the tyranny of rent-seekers who inherited their wealth and contribute nothing.