What do the fascists get out of saying the truth? Shouldn’t they be cheering on the war machine? My conservative family is sharing this vid around and I’m very confused on what to do. Why can’t it be socialists and communists who get millions of views by talking like this?
Dore is a crank and his oppinions on more than a couple of issues suck but we here are supposed to not be politicaly illiterate radlibs so how is he anything close to a fascist. Words mean things . Dore's opinions (socialy, covid wise etc) are basicaly close to what a lot of boomer commies have here in my country. Not people i organize with or have a great time arguing against but i would never in a million years think its remotely correct or usefull to call them fascists . Seems insane to me
And to repeat my self from an older thread:
How come americans here always (correctly) go on about how anti-imperialism and anti-war stances and action is by far the most important thing the American left should focus on and hold true yet they are much more likely to be “forgiving” to people or orgs with at best mid or actively bad socdem stances imperialism and foreign policy wise ( be it socdem politicians, orgs like the DSA or even media personalities) because they are vaugely “socialist” or preach medicare for all and still consider them allies .But there is no benifit of the doupt or usefullness to be acknowledged towards people with solid and open anti-war and anti-imperialist stances because they have bad opinions on vaccines or went on TC or whatever. Kinda betrayes a lot of people’s actual priorities by what they consider the gravest and unforgivable sins .
Sorry the battle for Covid or entryism to the dems to pass “socialish” policies is lost and was never one that could be won in America. Sorry im not american, i dont fucking care about Dore being annoying with “force the vote” or whatever squad electoral drama he was dumb about. Vax opinions being bad sucks but the same amount of people were gonna die in Ameica either way even if everyone in the entire “left” had the most correct opinions over vaccines and covid prevention . So seeing the american left , unable to form a semblance of a coherent and solid anti-imperialism and anti-war movement in the time its most needed, treating people that have some reach, arent liberals or fascists and have anti-war stances and correct opinions as enemies over vax opinions or going on TC while they completely fail to even attempt or agree at ostracizing people, politicians or (social) media heads with reactionary foreign policy positions is a sign that i shouldnt hope for much. You would find more people here willing to call John Oliver “usefull” and give him some benifit of the doupt or use his content for propaganda than Jimmy Dore (who again i dont care enough to have strong feelings about ,especially if his dumb opinions are regarding vaccines or the dems or the dsa) and thats trully baffling to me
If the DSA’s and demsocs and libsocs and squads that the american left has either given the benifit of the doupt to for years and years and the american left itself either actively stand against that movement , cant agree around it or push for it and are unable to convince even idk 10k people a year towards an anti war movement then sorry im not gonna consider a bad thing that an antivax semi-conservative socdem dumbass (or whatever he is) with strong anti-war stance like Jimmy Dore reaching a couple of million GoP boomers with a " support to Ukraine and war with China are bad and a deep state thing and fuck the dems and neocons too" message that even 10% of them may be sympathetic too american isolationism and “no money to zelensky” . If you dont want that to be seen as useful or a net positive by a non American then better hope for the american leftists and orgs and socdem politicians that they may support to give me something on the by far most pressing and important issue.
No mention of his views on trans people :thonk-trans:
Even if you don't give a shit about the things you mentioned, they matter because they tell us loud and clear that Dore is a grifter who is willing to say whatever gives himself clout. It's foolish to blindly fall behind some random unknown quantity, but in Dore's case he's not even unknown, but rather is known to be a grifter. Like the reason Force The Vote is bad is not like, "How dare you criticize AOC!" it's because it shows how he's willing to infight or pick pointless fights just to increase his own clout. He'd happily do the same to a more ideologically committed person/org if he saw the opportunity.
The question is not whether we can stomach Dore's views for the case of advancing our agenda, but whether aligning with Dore actually does anything to advance our agenda at all. If we rally around grifters and clout chasers, then we very quickly lose control of our messaging, and actually accomplishing things will not be a priority. By aligning with someone like Dore, we would be potentially sacrificing the ability to unite with people who he randomly attacks to gain clout, as well as the people who recognize him as a grifter and don't want to be associated with him. And he offers virtually nothing in exchange.
It's fucking wild how quickly people on here will throw actual orgs under the bus in favor of some random online grifter with a two minute clip on Fox News.
What does this mean, though? I'm opposed to the war, but I don't "align" with Dore. I'm just pleased to see any anti war rhetoric on mainstream TV.
By align I mean the same sorts of things the person I was responding to was talking about. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, letting yourself be associated with him, etc. Admittedly the whole thing is kind of irrelevant materially speaking, but it matters in terms of optics.
Antiwar rhetoric on TV is good. I guess I see it the same way as I might view some of the "new-Atheist" types, where I was always like, I agree with them to the extent that they agree with me, but they don't speak for me or represent me.
Could you expand on this? How does one let oneself be associated with a douchey youtube shouty guy who sometimes says the right things, much less often than he says the wrong things?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but that seems to be the same position I have, and shipwreck has, about this. If you'll notice their opening sentence is:
If I start telling someone about my position on Ukraine, I'm not going to bring him up, and if someone else brings him up, I'll tell them that I'm only vaguely familiar and make it clear that my views aren't influenced by his. I'm also gonna dunk on people who hand-wring that "the left" (i.e. some tweets I saw) not liking him is a major problem somehow or an indication of hypocrisy or bad priorities.
shipwreck isn't who I responded to?
And yeah the person I responded to admits he has bad positions but also goes on to make all these sweeping criticisms of "the left" for not wanting to be associated with him, which is what I disagree with.
Excellent point this really resonated with me. Thanks for pointing this out :meow-hug: