I legit didn't know that "succdem is moderate fascism" was a Stalin quote. Fuckin based :stalin-approval:
One of the issues with this take is that social democracy in the global periphery is different. Lula aint no fascist, the Social Democratic Party of Korea has been a supportive part of the DPRK since forever, etc.
Almost like you need to analyze the material conditions for certain places at certain times.
seems to mirror the nature of (generally anticolonial) nationalism in the periphery, there's gotta be some connection there that I can't quite articulate
I'd have to re-read Stalin's 'Marxism and the National Question' again, but I think in a more or less simple take; The Socdems of the Colonized world and of the Imperial Periphery are fighting for their country's right to nationally self-determine, whereas the Succdems of the Imperialist nations of the inner and outer core have no urge to fight for national self-determination as their countries stand at the apex. The Imperial succdems fight to preserve what is taken whereas the Colonial socdems fight to retrieve what is stolen.
If you're in a position of relative power then ideas like "we should do better for our own,"* and "we must protect what we have from outsiders" are inherently going to be and/or flirt with reactionary ideology because it's built on ideas of superiority and privilege based on the exploitation and subjugation of the Other. When you're in a subjugated and exploited position then those same ideas instead become about liberation since they're about ending the subjugation and improving one's material conditions with one's own resources rather than resources stolen from others.
To put it another way, saying "our people must rule themselves" is reactionary when it's a dominant ethnic group in the imperial core saying it to argue for disenfranchising and removing ethnic minorities, but revolutionary when it's a periphery country arguing that its indigenous people must have self-determination and that its government shouldn't be ruled by foreign businesses and representatives of the imperial core. Although, obviously, it can still be reactionary in the periphery when used by a dominant ethnic group to argue for disenfranchising and purging marginalized minority groups.
* And I will say that, obviously, that can also be a revolutionary idea in the imperial core as long as it doesn't abandon the understanding that "the people deserve a larger share of this country's wealth" must go along with ending the fact that a huge portion of that wealth is being extracted from subjugated people in the periphery. Pushing welfare programs and workers' rights in the imperial core is perfectly fine as long as one is not also complicit in supporting imperialism and the propaganda that manufactures consent for it.
While true, i believe it’s best to reserve our wrath for the most evil of the current world.
Let’s start by focusing our rage on billionaires and fascists. We can rage at the social democrats once the fascists and billionaires are guillotined.
While this might be true in a US setting, the situation is different in places with an established succdem party. There you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them".
Established succdems are almost as virulently anti-communist as fascists and are as much enemies of the people as any other liberal-conservative party.
The Dems aren't even the social democrat party though, they are way too far to the right for that...
At the national level, that is true.
One thing that I think at least is interesting and instructive, is in rare places where the democrats don't hold a monopoly on social democracy - like for instance Burlington, Vermont. There, the democrats pretty openly take the role of the conservatives and the progressive party takes the role of the social democrats. To your point, the progressives are on the wrong side of the revolution as well. With that outlook, which I think is correct, all electoral politics are on the wrong side of the revolution, and you see it (electoralism) for the dead end that it is.
