Biden is neoliberal (neocon?) war criminal and has been since before he even became Vice President. But let's really not be the "actually Trump 2024 is good actually compared to Biden" people. It's not only a bad look, it doesn't reflect our beliefs or principles.
Maybe the couple posts I've seen about this is :fedposting: but Trump is also a fascist and was doing heinous shit with his power too. Not to mention he'd use the post to pogrom trans people. And all of nakedly fascist stuff he did to suppress the 2020 BLM movement (unmarked feds disappearing people in vans??? Thumping a bible on the steps of the capitol while Feds teargassed protestors???)
Fuck Biden and Fuck Trump and fuck anyone who tries to carry water for either of them.
And all of nakedly fascist stuff he did to suppress the 2020 BLM movement (unmarked feds disappearing people in vans??? Thumping a bible on the steps of the capitol while Feds teargassed protestors???)
I'm not disagreeing with your overall message, but the Patriot Act that allowed for him to do that, was something Biden regularly bragged about being the father of.
Yeah, I don't believe for a second that it would have been handled any differently under Biden.
But Trump did handle it that way, so we as leftists should never cheer on this fascist unless he's shidding himself on live television. I would probably ammend my statement that if Trump pooped his pants in front of the whole country, I might cheer that on.
I honestly don't know if the BLM 2020 summer would have happened under Biden/Hilary...at least certainly not been as large and extremely vilified though.
They encouraged it because any chaos under Trump + giving a big old show of orangemanbad was great for the Dems. To the suburban libs scary protest oh no, to the city libs millitary police oh no.
Yeah thats true, they fairly quickly went into panic mode once property was being destroyed and city budgets stretched.
Well BLM started under Obama. The responses to George Floyd's murder would have still been large, probably what they were in reality. But Californian and east coast cities would NOT have shown the same level of solidarity without a Republican in power.
Yeah, I was 50/50 on 2015 BLM (for babybrain centrist reasons) and if I remember right, that was a pretty normal take in my very 'progressive' community.
2020 was a full uproar among the same types of people. Pretty sure a huge amount of them were driven by anti-Trump energy.
Yeah, has everyone here forgotten about Ferguson, Baltimore, etc? If you want to know what summer 2020 would have looked like under a dem president use those incidents for reference. (So basically, still protests but more localized and smaller scale + govt still clamping down on it massively)
That's a really good point, if anything, I feel like the crackdown was a lot crazier under Obama. I don't think any organizers from Minneapolis were found tied up in burned out cars with bullet holes in the back of their skull like the ones in Ferguson were.
I think it would have been similar minus the Bible photo op
What liberal photo op would Biden give us? Walking though the BLM street or something?
One more thing, again not disagreeing, but sometimes I wonder...Trump was really good for the left in that it was much easier to radicalize people by showing them the Democratic party's lame response to Trump's naked fascism, as you call it. The second Biden was in office, a whole lot of libs that were starting to wake up, put their head back in the sand. So I do wonder...🤷♂️
Yeah that's certainly interesting food for thought, but if they immediately went back to the status quo once Biden was in office were they really radicalized? Like isn't that the point of the political pony show, so to weaponize your anger at capitalism against the Enemy Team.
But really as socialists, our political organization shouldn't be anywhere near the presidential apparatus. Even in rhetoric, I think it's essential that our radicalization doesn't focus on targetting the Republicans or the Democrats, for the reasons we've discussed. We cannot recognize that political apparatus or use it's rhetoric, because then we're just gonna activate latent :brainworms: . Our radicalization should focus on showing that no matter which "party is in power" the real power is the capitalist system designed to exploint every person and resource it can.
Eh. Radicalization is a process, not necessarily a flipped switch. People are much more amenable to hearing about how the system isn't working when you can give them examples that aren't going to put them on the defensive. Having a dem in office absolutely makes that more difficult.
I didn’t go back. I’ll never go back. I know lots of people who would’ve been back the blue libs and are now reading communist theory. There’s successes and losses and we’ll work with whatever we’re given
Isn’t all of that just fatalism because we know that the liberals will lose, and not because communism is about to win in the US. I don’t think anyone here really likes Trump, but he (or someone worse) is coming back, and I think everyone can have a little schadenfreude at the liberals’ expense. It’s not as if they are about to be allowed to have too much else.
it'd be cool if Gloria de La Riva won but it's never going to happen for the structural reasons everyone got a proctologist's inside view of in 2020. I can enjoy Trump winning out of spite because what I feel won't change shit
Maybe you'll not enjoy Trump winning so much as you'll enjoy Biden/Kamala losing. No matter the result you will get to see some truly awful people lose, and there's nothing wrong with trying to enjoy that before whoever wins really gets going with whatever brand of awful makes us all sad again. The good thing is that even in the unlikely case that the liberals manage to win somehow you would get to see Trump lose again, which would also be kind of fun. The bad thing is that one of them will win.
No matter the result you will get to see some truly awful people lose
This is what made the 2020 election night coverage so fun to watch. For maybe the first 12 hours after the polls closed it looked like Trump really could pull a win and it resulted in a collective meltdown throughout all of lib space that we got to sit back and enjoy.
Then when the tide turned it resulted in a collective meltdown in chud space that we got to sit back and enjoy again. It really was the best of both worlds for frustrated leftists looking to overdose on schadenfreude.
Exactly, and i'll guess neither of those were you being a huge fan of the winner. Have whatever fun you can before they start killing!
I feel schadenfreude AND I think Trump is at least a slightly worse outcome than Biden because I'm a radical centrist :centrist:
schadenfreude is one thing when he's pissing off libs over a tweet. I am calling out several users (probably :fedposting: ) who have made posts saying they hope Trump beats Biden or Kamala in 2024.
But that is just the thing. Shcadenfreude is all that will be available. I am not even American, but I want to see some liberals lose. I also want to see the Trump supporters lose. Whichever side loses is going to throw a fit and that will be funny. Then some absolute monster will be in charge of the US and lots of people will die because of that and it will not be funny. I can't change that. My dream of seeing both sides lose will not come true, but I will get to see one of them lose, and I will try to get whatever enjoyment I can out of that.
As long as we don't actually vote for Trump (which I doubt any of us would ever do), what does it matter what we hope for?
The"good" thing about Trump was that he forced liberals to pretend to give a shit. Democrats have moved way further right since they won the government and are now actively embracing Trump policies. Trump's second term is going to be a bipartisan nightmare.
Seeing all these dipshit liberal politicians crusading on Kids in Kages for years under Trump, who are now not saying jack fucking shit about Biden expanding the program substantially, caused me deep psychic damage. I was pessimistic, but still not ready for that one.
i just fucking hate that i have to give a shit about your right wing vs extremely right wing elections at all
under trump, there was an uneasy truce between the left and libs. under biden, the left is hung out to dry
The democrats have always been a coalition party. They need us when shit hits the fan and they hate us when they’re in control. Real foul weather friends
If by "uneasy truce" you mean "libs had already agreed upon, and were actively planning on how to fuck us from the jump" then sure.
libs were listening for a while. do you not remember 2020? there was momentum; i knew countless normie city libs who donated money/supplies to bail/protest funds
I think this place falls for the contrarian mindset of "wanting thing because the libs hate it" sometimes. You are supposed to trigger the libs by being too left for them, not by cheering for the right!
Yeah I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but there is no vanguard in the party to take advantage of whatever chaos Trump causes
"I enjoy :trump-anguish: tweets" is not a good reason to give him even more connections and power. Again.
Reject "popcorn" brain.
Can you define your use of "fascist" for me? Like what do you mean specifically?
I think it's kinda important here to differentiate between the establishment neoliberal fascism and the far right religious fascism that is trying to take power, which is why I'm asking. Trump seems to largely be the same as every other president that has existed, liberals think that he's a literal nazi but he's obviously not, parts of his base are but he's just an opportunist rather than a true ideological believer. I see largely no difference in actual policy implementation between him and Biden, in fact his term was arguably much less harmful than Biden's term has been no? On top of that it legitimately propelled the growth of the left, blm and more which all just dropped dead when Biden got elected and libs went back to brunch.
Literally everything you've mentioned is happening or would happen under Biden. If huge protest movements sprang up again like BLM you'd see unmarked feds and everything else again, police and the feds would behave exactly the same way. As for the attacks on trans people that are happening I do not see Biden actually stopping or fighting any of it at all.. Which is exactly how Trump would also be but in that case he would have liberal media calling it out and attacking him for it whereas they're completely silent for Biden. I think there would be a stronger and louder movement to try and protect trans people if Trump were in power because media and the liberal base would actually be politically mobilised for it.
I think something desperately needs to be done to stop the attacks on schools, libraries and other things for books right now though, a very dangerous road is happening.
I would argue that the BLM protests would have been much less likely to happen, since libs/radlibs that made up a large part of the mass would have felt much more complacent. Just saw your comment below, seems like you also have this belief.
Yes. Liberal mobilisation played a big part in that, ok so they also tried to coopt it and deradicalise it too but they played a big part in the noise, the promotion and the bubbling of anger.
The best point I think I have to make here is do you want liberals to be fighting the gov because they correctly think it's fascist or do you want them complacent? Red fascism and blue fascism don't matter but liberals only recognise red as fascism and react appropriately in a way that legitimately helps us and our goals.
I dont have opinions anymore about who should be president, but yeah that argument has been pretty well debated.
Most liberals I know went as far as to read a book by a black author and order some take out from a black owned business and shut down at the discussion of dismantling systems of oppression. it was very sad. For a lot of us it felt like it was finally time we would be heard and believed but alas.
It's an important learning moment for the collective. People need to remember it next time, take their energy but do not let them lead and do not expect them to stick around unless they make real ideological commitments to drop liberalism. The conscious choice to drop the label of liberal and take the label of socialist is the true first step that rips most of these people out of that space but they're still a mess if they don't get a re-education from Fanon, Settlers, and other things.
I havent read Settlers or any Fanon
spoiler
I mostly just watch Parenti's lectures and listen to podcasts
in fact his term was arguably much less harmful than Biden’s term has been no
My main point is that there's no use in trying to think in those terms since it's gonna be a fascist in power anyways. There's no real answer to "which one did worse" because they both perpetuate the same bloody system. And depending on who you ask, material life was actually worse under Trump.
Not sure how material life wasn't better under Trump, covid hadn't happened yet and when it did happen Trump actually gave people money. Did Biden actually give anyone any covid relief money in the end? I missed whether that actually happened or not from over here in the UK.
I concede that life might have felt worse under Trump because it was noise noise noise 24/7 about shit because the libs were actually mobilised and doing something for once. I believe that probably felt very bad for trans people hearing about themselves getting harmed and attacked constantly. That's happening under Biden too though and he's doing nothing about it, we're just not hearing as much about it because there's literally no liberal political mobilisation.
I argue that it is in fact much better for these groups to have the political mobilisation occurring than to not have it occurring. The battle is outside of electoral politics now, it's happening at local levels in schools in streets in libraries and so on and so forth. That battle needs fighting with the greatest mobilisation possible and the conditions that generate that mobilisation are the better conditions to have. Between two people that will largely have exactly the same policy and liberals being mobilised vs passive I would prefer them to be mobilised.
I think Yanis Varoufakis was right to be doomer when he explained his position here, it was much worse that libs went back to brunch. He was right about pretty much everything he said here. Trump isn't in the whitehouse but Trumpism is in power. I think it's arguably better to have Trump and the mobilised "left" (liberals) than it is to have Biden and no mobilised left.
This is of course the view of people with no skin in the game though from over here in Europe. I understand things feel or look different when closer to a situation.
EDIT: Let me put this another way. If both candidates are to largely just do what the establishment has always done... Is it more beneficial to have liberals fighting their own government as if it is fascist or liberals not fighting their own government at all? I think it is more beneficial to have liberals fighting the fascist state because they truly believe Trump is different and a fascist than to not.
This is the exact kind of argument that is not helpful and I was explicitly calling out with the main post. There is no "better" between Fash Red and Fash Blue.
Excellent points were made about the difference in material conditions when Trump was in office. In fact I consider myself convinced by that argument, so I would say it is explicitly helpful. Your argument in response to it is just to deny that there is any material difference depending on whether it's "fash red or fash blue" in office? Then why call out people for not being anti-Trump?
Objectively, things are just as bad now if not dramatically worse, but everyone I know in real life is literally back out to brunch. Nobody is even pretending to fight for change anymore. I would argue this is in fact, worse for the actual left (tm).
I mean... I agree to an extent. Neither are "better" but there is absolutely a strategic difference of outcome worth considering. What wording or phrasing would you prefer me to use?
But to be less irony poisoned, it's a very tricky word to define specifically. I generally call actions facsist if the government is using violence to suppress popular power or subvert legal norms. So of course you could call every police force in America a fascist occupying force (and I wouldn't disagree with you) and you could also call every American president fascist as well. That's why I said Trump was "nakedly fascist" with his use of force where Obama and Biden are more polite fascists.
:this:
I know we hate liberals here and it's knee-jerk to hold opinions that piss them off, but just genuinely look at what happened between 2017 and 2020
remember, fuck each and every individual bourgeoisie politician, we stand with the proletariat and the proletariat alone :red-fist:
supporting politicians at all should only occur in the rare event that they can actually lessen the pain of the proletariat and unburden the people so that revolutionary action is more accessible like in the case of :bernie-pout:'s medicare4all (and even then be highly skeptical)
Supporting trump is cringe but saying different piles of shit both smell like shit is just an observation one might make. If anyone is handing anything to Trump they are lost
Absolutely, Biden and Trump both exist within an imperialist system where every facet or rule is designed to exploit somebody. I honestly don't think you can become an American president and be a good person. What's dangerous is people who say stupid stuff like "well Biden increased the ICE budget and Trump decreased it, so Biden is worse." Which is :brainworms:
