thinking-about-it

  • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    Social Democrats have always opposed fascism, from Nazi Germany to more recent times.

    Alex, the question is "What did the Social Democrats hire the Freikorps for in 1919?"

    • sisatici [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 days ago

      also, why did they not utilise the same power to bring down fascists like they did to communists?

      also, whose chancellor gave power to hitler against communists?

        • MaeBorowski [she/her]
          ·
          3 days ago

          What specifically is this from?

          rant on how ineffectual search engines are

          I've been trying to search it and my fucking god all search engines are SHIT now. Searx (using google and bing) returns no results when I throw in a few quote marks as search operators to get exact text matches, and won't let me use yandex for some reason. Using Yandex directly is impossible because I'm not doing 5 ridiculous image captchas in a row to prove I'm not a bot and just conduct a single search. Brave keeps turning up wikipedia pages and Time articles but completely ignoring quote marks (I fucking hate how Brave just up and ignores important search operators without telling you, just to make it look like it's feeding you results, even though those results are ones you specifically asked for it NOT to return which is why the operators are there in the first place.

          I finally started asking the Brave AI exactly where the text originated from and it says

          The text likely comes from a historical book, article, or academic paper that discusses the Nazi Party's rise to power and the role of various political parties, including the Social Democrats, in that process.

          Really? No shit.

          Also, searching marxists.org (which just uses google anyway) didn't help either.


          • JuanGLADIO [any]
            ·
            2 days ago

            This passage is from William L. Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." The quote describes an incident in the German Reichstag, highlighting the complex and sometimes contradictory behaviors of political factions during the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. It reflects a moment when Social Democrats, despite their opposition to nationalist ideologies, found themselves emotionally moved by a nationalistic display.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    3 days ago

    Once you realize that the options are private property and fascism, or liberation, the teams really become clear.

    • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 days ago

      And when you really look clear, the teams turn into the following:

      notes

      Unequal exchange-derived western hegemonic/comprador 'social democracy'

      or

      INTER-national-liberation based SOCIALIST democracy...

  • NewDark [he/him]
    ·
    3 days ago

    It's because you ultimately want positive social change but are naive enough to believe you can compromise with reactionaries and fascists.

  • adultswim_antifa [he/him]
    ·
    3 days ago

    I've seen social democrats wondering aloud if it will be necessary for a dictator to implement their green new deal plans against popular will. So imagine some big nationalized American Green Corporation run by a dictatorship, making huge infrastructure investments without touching private property, but in a social democratic way, not at all fascist.

  • ReadFanon [any, any]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    This is a tangent but I came across some small-time politics streamer recently. They were trash-tier, probably SocDem or Destiny-esque (or maybe of the same calibre of a Vaush orbiter like Demon Mama.)

    Whatever the case, they were doing the typical railing against tankies and shit.

    But the things that really stuck in my craw about this streamer were:

    • They did some postgrad degree in politics and they were constantly waving this qualification around as if it made them immune from dogshit takes on politics and that it made them the smartest person in the room.

    • They referred to anarchists as "fellow travellers of the left". MFer, do you realise that anarchism is older than Marxism and it's probably older than whatever bullshit pseudo-left ideology you cling to is??

    • They accused an anarchist of being, I shit you not, antisemitic and of "thinking like a fascist" because they said that anarchism cannot be achieved under the current circumstances due to outside imperialist forces that will destroy an anarchist revolution. There was zero mention of anything to do with Jewish people or coded antisemitic terms like "cabal" or "lizard people" or anything of the sort.

    • They claimed that Marxism is outdated because these days everyone is a mixture of bourgeoisie and proletarian.

    Imo SocDems are some of the worst people to deal with on the political spectrum outside of the part that is circa-fascist. Most people will listen at least a little bit. Most people aren't utterly convinced of the fact that they have achieved a level of moral, political, and historical enlightenment that borders on apotheosis. In my experience, SocDems almost invariably tend to have this towering superiority complex that means anything that advances their political objectives is justified and that they can claim a monopoly on everything.

    As an example here, I recently had an exchange with a reactionary who was spouting anti-Marx nonsense. They said that Marx was disproven because his predictions were wrong. I asked for an example of a prediction that Marx made. They said "that socialism can be achieved through evolutionary means" (lol). I responded telling them that the first page of chapter one of The Communist Manifesto completely debunks this fallacious claim they made.

    Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

    They shut the fuck up because they got called out in the most embarrassing way possible, as they rightly should have. But when I told this streamer SocDem that the terms bourgeoisie and proletarian are mutually-exclusive and that they should be embarrassed by their lack of understanding of basic definitions of these terms, did they shut the fuck up? Did they ask why I thought that I was in the right? Did they go and check? Nope! They just doubled down on it and started calling me an idiot because they knew that their political insight is both unsurpassed and infallible.

    Of course there's always going to be people from any political persuasion that are really arrogant and that believe their politics is the only good one but for some reason it's always the SocDems who are utterly intransigent and imperious in their beliefs. I've legitimately had more fruitful exchanges with Jordan Peterson fans on the reality of Bill C-16 than have ever had with SocDems about anything.

    I can almost guarantee you what sort of response a SocDem would say to hearing that I find it easier to have a genuine discussion with some Jordan Peterson fans than I do any of them. They would be incensed at the mere suggestion that they would be compared unfavourably to an inferior group such as Petersonites and they'd attempt to gaslight me by saying that this experience is indicative of the fact that my values are more closely aligned to Peterson fans than they are to the "real" left because of course SocDems cannot fail, they can only be failed.

    • Alaskaball [comrade/them]
      hexagon
      M
      ·
      3 days ago

      I can almost guarantee you what sort of response a SocDem would say to hearing that I find it easier to have a genuine discussion with some Jordan Peterson fans than I do any of them. They would be incensed at the mere suggestion that they would be compared unfavourably to an inferior group such as Petersonites and they'd attempt to gaslight me by saying that this experience is indicative of the fact that my values are more closely aligned to Peterson fans than they are to the "real" left because of course SocDems cannot fail, they can only be failed.

      Pretty much my case with me favoring talking to the hogs about socialist ideas over libs.

      I'm starting to think it's moreso because to be a lib you have to have just enough political education to put yourself ahead of the average hog and that inflates their ego like a Mike foxtrotter whereas the average hog doesn't really give a shit about politics beyond vibes

  • regul [any]
    ·
    3 days ago

    Keir's not a social democrat and neither is the Labour party underneath him. They're out and proud neoliberals.

  • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
    ·
    3 days ago

    "Superior" is also such a red flag, just using it unqualified like that as if to imply that any ideology is just comprehensively superior at everything, and not the product of a situation. Like sure, our ideology has better predictive and analytical tools at its disposal. You could say technically in these areas (and morally) it's superior, but who just thinks in these terms offhand? Idk, maybe im not doing a great job articulating this but superiority talk turns people off, and we don't need to indulge in it anyway because we are blessed and cursed with correctness.

    • mar_k [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 days ago

      saw that and had a weird feeling too! thought i was just being pedantic since nothing to really pin down, but i feel like the connotation of that word for anything to do with humans, cultures, beliefs systems etc is inherently fashy

      also hate the way this person types like they're trying to reach a word count in an essay. "Yet, in contrast," PICK ONE!!

  • Angel [any]
    ·
    3 days ago

    "I just don't want all that extreme socialism you guys are talking about. Why do we need that? Can't we just reform a system that is inherently unable to be reformed into something that benefits anyone but the super wealthy into something far more egalitarian? Please listen to how nuanced my enlightened centrism (which totally is super unlike fascism) is!"