He got me to read the Manifesto and would have hours' long debates with our social-democratic roommate and now this. It's really shaking me up a bit.
He is on the whole defeatist 'nothing will fundamentally shake the imperial machine so might as well pick the wardog with better domestic policies' tip. I want to get through to him but I am getting stuck.
For example:
i also refuse to not vote my conscience but i figured this time its not like doing this abstract process to pick if id prefer -100 points vs -200 points is gonna matter that much if i genuinely believe itll even be slightly better under kamala i might as well
This kind of shit terrifies me to the core because what if I become like that
Maybe before, but nowadays they seem as miserable as the rest of us
True, the fear and paranoia being spread by the media and corporations is getting to them
Liberals genuinely have lost the ability to distinguish reality from fiction, and you can see a microcosm of it in the fascist Lemmy instances.
Conservatives tell them one thing, they can easily discard it in favor of facts and logic. So they abandon the working class.
The Party tells them one thing, leftists prove them wrong with the logic and facts they used to value so highly. So they abandon facts and logic.
The US State Dept tells them one thing, yet reality itself disproves it. So they abandon reality.
They clutch their ballots and throw their tantrums and hysterics about voting because that’s the one thing they have left that is real. They can fill in a little bubble and know they did the Good Thing and are on the Good Side and everyone else telling them mean things are the Bad Side.
they are and it's worse because their internal contradictions / lack of true explanations make it intolerable for them without understanding why. i get how being a marxist can feel like a curse sometimes but i would never choose the alternative.
Like housepets on the fourth of July, I think someone here said once
Calmer maybe, but happier? I have my doubts. Once you know, can you ever really forget?
Heh, that’s nothing. My mentor, one of the best Marxist theorists in the country I grew up in, is now a reactionary who spouts right wing conspiracy theories lol. He got me into Marxism some 25 years ago and was one of the most progressive activists back in the days. Also we’re not from a Western country.
I honestly think that failures after failures of left wing movements globally since the 1990s have broken the brains of many who used to be at the forefront of left wing activism. It also coincided with the period of neoliberalism being spread to the Global South in the form of overseas educated professionals returning and joining social democratic/democratic socialist parties en masse and brought Western liberal ideologies into traditional workers parties.
I sense that many here are probably quite new to the whole socialism/communism thing. It’s sometimes discouraging to think that in another 10-20 years, probably half of your comrades would be fighting you on the other side of the struggle.
I sense that many here are probably quite new to the whole socialism/communism thing. It’s sometimes discouraging to think that in another 10-20 years, probably half of your comrades would be fighting you on the other side of the struggle.
This was true for every single revolution (the most tragic example being the Irish Revolution), but as they say: the struggle continues.
the Irish Revolution
assume you mean the easter rising?
i get sad about the civil war most days but i would say in terms of historical knock-on effects / timelines diverging the german revolution is the most tragic.
It’s sometimes discouraging to think that in another 10-20 years, probably half of your comrades would be fighting you on the other side of the struggle.
After watching the survivors of the failure of Amerika's civil rights movement and who they align with, I've come to accept that this will be the case until the heat death of the universe. No one is immune to minstrel-ing out for the crackers.
pragmatism for sure has a strong association with fascism.
I don't think it's practicality itself, because practicality dictates, to summarize by a lot, communism. No, I think they're doing the same thing they do with "logic" and "reason": kill them, and taxidermy them into little rhetorical totems they can wave around to give their mad pronunciations the illusion of weight. How many times have we all seen fascists say some ridiculous, out of pocket psychosexual shit and then just say the words Logic and Reason to try and justify it? Now Practicality has joined the pantheon of flayed concepts, not the real practicality of rational empathy and cooperation but the nihilistic, insectoid zero-sum Practicality™️ of genocide.
I think the other people telling you to cut him off or calling him a fascist are going a little far. "Might as well" isn't exactly a Kamala canvasser, lots of people get alienated in America. The obvious question to ask would be "is the difference big enough to bother voting," and question why his politics have changed.
Ultimately he's your friend and you know him better than anyone on a reddit spinoff forum, and its your call whether to convince him to vote differently or if this should affect your friendship.
Voting in American elections is just signaling your fealty to the regime.
Of course I'm still voting so whatever. I like filling bubbles okay.
It's not about whether voting matters or not, it's about watching a supposed comrade fail such an obvious litmus test
If some "leftist" started bragging about voting for Trump or pressuring people to do the same, we'd rightly dogpile that dipshit, it's not the act of voting that's causing the beef, it's who you're voting FOR that leads to these rifts
Why do you care about how they vote? It literally doesn't matter.
I agree that voting doesn't matter in terms of making a material difference in the social hierarchy because the US is not a democracy. However, who a person votes for (or whether they vote) is an indication of their values, which are in turn an indication of their future behavior, and anyone who votes for the regime that is currently conducting a fucking genocide demonstrates either their ignorance (which it seems OP's friend cannot claim as a so-called socialist) or a fundamental lack of solidarity with those who are being dehumanized, tortured, and murdered, the victims of that genocide. It demonstrates a fundamental lack of solidarity with all oppressed peoples of the world. Just because voting doesn't matter with respect to who wins the election, it sure as hell matters on an interpersonal level.
Find it pretty funny how electoralist brainworms have infected even socialist Americans to the point that they'd think convincing someone not to vote is a useful course of action.
It has next to nothing to do with electoralism as it is only tangentially related to the election itself. Again, it is about a person's position relative to class struggle. If a member of the ruling class were murdering your family and your friend decided to throw in their support to that murderer with the rationalization that that murderer might benefit your friend more than some other murderer, it doesn't matter how inconsequential their support is - it still tells you a great deal about your friend's priorities and interests which don't actually include your dying family or other oppressed people, only themselves.
Or go vote to better maintain a friendship. Or lie about it. Again it simply doesn't matter.
Everything else aside, this is still terrible advice. Lie to your friend about your principles regarding genocide to "better maintain a friendship"? Gross.
Again it simply doesn't matter.
Socialism is not nihilism.
The issue I have with this argument is that i feel like it is confusing voting for someone with endorsing them publicly. An argument I've heard from socialists online that has really resonated with me is that yes, voting for president in a liberal democray is a way that you can influence politics but it is literally the least powerful and least effective way to do so. Therefore if we, as people who call ourselves socialists and who want to change society for the better, if we spend a large percentage of our time online arguing with people about voting, we are being tricked into believing in this lie that voting between two bourgeoisie candidates is meaningful. The clearest way this manifests is in so-called socialists who demand that other socialists vote for Democrats. These people are obviously betraying their values and have become party hacks for the libs.
But another way that I think this manifests, and that ties back to this thread, is when we go out of our way to spend time and effort demanding that people write in a third party candidate or abstain instead of voting tactically. Initially this was really counterintuitive for me because I hate Kamala and the Democrats so much for enabling genocide that I couldn't stomach the idea of anyone I cared about actually voting for them. But upon reflection, what I was really disgusted by was the idea of someone endorsing or supporting them. Because that is what makes a material difference. If someone is spending time and energy getting people to vote for Kamala, or any other liberal war criminal, then they are knowingly or not working to preserve the current system of oppression. But if all someone does is bubble in her name instead of trumps, they are not materially supporting genocide. While I personally don't buy into the idea of voting as harm-reduction on a presidential level, if someone else wants to I'm not going to argue with them about it. What matters so much more to me is what we do with the rest of our time. If we can make material differences in our communities during the other 364 days of the year, that makes 10,000x the difference than a harm-reduction vote. (Again this only applies to the vote itself, if someone is going around advocating for others to vote blue then that's a different story)
For context on where I'm coming from, I voted for De La Cruz but I don't live in a swing state so my vote is purely symbolic anyway.
Anyway for OP don't lie to your friend, that's kinda shitty. I'd say if he wants to vote kamala as a token 0.1% harm reduction then by all means, but maybe point out that all of this energy he is spending convicing others to vote blue could be better spent doing literally anything else.
It's not that I really disagree with this, I just think it's mostly moot. Overall, it's splitting hairs in a somewhat odd way, and especially considering the context of OP, where their friend is pressuring OP to vote Democrat, it just doesn't apply. It's almost obvious that what we are talking about here is not some secret schroedinger's voting booth vote that no one else knows about, but a vote that is announced and therefore is a form of, as you put it, public endorsement. If someone secretly votes Kamala without telling a soul, especially if they're doing real community work that benefits people in material ways, then sure, none are the wiser and the actual work that person is doing supercedes whatever asymptotically minuscule effect a single vote has. But then we're almost getting into "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" territory.
Though that's not really what we're talking about here. Going back to my analogy above about a friend supporting the murder of your family (and to be clear, I know you're not the same person I was responding to with that analogy). If you are completely and forever ignorant of your friend's support for that person murdering your family, and their support of that murderer doesn't actually change the ability of that murderer to do any more harm, then of course, you would have zero reason to think or feel negatively about your friend and no material difference is made. I would still contend that your friend is a shitty friend and a shitty person, but again, "if a tree falls in the forest..."
But that also does bring up another aspect of this. The person who voted blue (or in the analogy the friend who secretly gave their insignificant support to your family's murderer) still themselves know what they did. So it matters to them. And while it may make zero difference to the outside world in that very moment or by that specific act, it still "matters" in the broad sense depending on their reasoning. If a person votes blue, or red for that matter, so long as they're voting for fascists, is it because they do feel that the benefit to themselves outweighs the genocidal harm that candidate has done and will do? Is it because they laughingly did it in a cynical fit knowing that their vote doesn't mean shit, though they actually despise the person they voted for and recognize they won't benefit from that vote? If it's the former, then that person is still someone who can't be trusted to do the right thing, even if no one is aware of it. If it's the latter, then sure, but I think their jokerification is approaching worrisome levels even if no one else knows. To put it one last way, if someone is secretly a racist, but never expresses it and only does things that positively effect the people they hate, then "no harm, no foul" but I still think that in the real world, a person who is racist will always tend to behave in ways that have negative effects in the world. And so too with secret Harris voter. No one might hear that one tree, but there is a near certainty other trees are going to fall when people are around to hear it.
Edit to add:
In short, I'm with @frauddogg@hexbear.net on this one.
I'm not going to pick arguments over votes in the presidential election
I am. I want to know exactly who decided that in their personal calculus, that they could accept the genocide of another sovereign group of people if it meant the security of their own rights-- because when it's my turn on the sacrificial altar, it'll be those same coons, crackers, and assorted miscellaneous misleaders holding the knives.
I want to know who I can't trust turning my back to.
Elections don't matter, but who you vote for if you do does matter. It is an indicator of personal values.
If you are aware a candidate is committing a genocide and you are still voting for them... Then that does very much matter.
You don't have to explain to me that electorialism is a fuck. I know that. We all know that. Give your comrades the bare decency of assuming they understand basic concepts, even if you disagree with them.If you vote for Kamala while knowing she is committing a genocide, you are supporting someone committing a genocide. Electorialism is a fuck, but if you vote it is because you give it some value. If you vote for someone committing a genocide, you are supporting genocide. You are validating genocide. You are legitimising someone committing a genocide.
Electorialism is a fuck, but if you vote it is because you give it some value.
Literally the next sentence.
Stop doing this debatebro bullshit.Edit: If you need more words to ignore then go and have your eyes glaze over @MaeBorowski@hexbear.nets comment
even socialist Americans
“Socialist” Americans are borderline useless to the actual liberation of humanity. 99% of them just want a bigger share of imperial plunder. All the good non-white ones got killed decades ago. The amount of truly principled socialists in the USA is so low as to be a completely irrelevant political force.
Sometimes it is useful to talk in electoral terms because someone is a liberal and cannot understand politics (yet) without it. And going all the way through the logic of how it doesn't matter takes a very long time
But this person is apparently not a super lib so I dunno
Met a kid online when I was a teenager who was the first communist I ever knew.
Then he went to college and was literally brainwashed by liberal propaganda.The friend who radicalized me is now a fascist-adjacent EU liberal.
It's depressing as fuck and I honestly don't know why, but at some point it's like he just decided to become a bad person. He was a communist when he was like 14, got me into it, then when he was like 17 he became a piece of shit. Insanely misogynistic, would only talk to women he wanted to have sex with, and just incredibly rude to people he didn't know, even when they were nice people.
Now he's moved to the Netherlands to study EU politics or something, and all I know about him comes from his Instagram posts. He posts ableist shit all the time, he's in love with the EU and he just posted a Ukrainian fascist badge which he owns.
I remember sitting in a park with him when we had just finished school, telling him that I was going to join an ML org. He snorted and called them larpers, to which I pointed out that he didn't do any political activity at all, and I'd rather larpers than nothing. He thought because he read Lacan and smoked weed and was cynical that he was above politics.
It's so depressing. He used to be genuinely empathetic. He was a feminist when every boy his age was sexist, he would always tell people of the evil shit the US does, he genuinely got angry at capitalism. Now he's just a sack of shit
It's because nobody is anything at 14. It's quite literally politics as aesthetic. Literally never trust teenagers to be consistently principled on anything going into the future, because those principles are purely ideal.
This reminds me of when I read a post somewhere about someone who met up with the person who convinced them to go vegan at a cafe after not seeing them for years. The person who convinced them to go vegan ordered a latte with dairy in it and revealed that they're an ex-vegan now. OP was so confused and disappointed.
I may be butchering some of the details, but it was something like that.
You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain. It's like old communists like Angela Davis stepping back from overt struggle and letting themselves become fangless 'critics' because they need to retire. Except in this friend's case we are still young and he was never concretely politically active.
Noam was always dog of american regime, just his leash was fairly long. But when in his decrepit age had one good take about Ukraine, he was immediately cancelled by the cointelpro bog.
Yeah, and the moment when it was revealed the anti-authoritarian left lifted a bit of their Ukraine damnatio memoriae to defend him lol. Makes you wonder.
We all are in the end :/ at least we play outside and I don't yell at them.
The trotskyist who helped a lot to radicalize me (I later became an ML thanks to hexbear) got a good job with the teamsters and is now just a standard liberal as far as I can tell.
Try talking to liberals using this logic and you will find they don't really care about the genocide. They are detached from the reality and are trying to normalize their electoral logic. Lesser evilism is their usual way of justifying why they dismiss their empathy and vote for a Dem.
Having a left would be valuable but they've been because it would necessarily mean these libs were on the left instead. Those who remained could be radicalized as well but many would retain this logic and this character.
I agree in this point, but I wanna point out that it isn't "everyone who is doing lesser evilism is basically a hitler follower"
It's "everyone who is doing lesser evilism, while being aware a genocide is going on and being fine with it continuing, is basically a hitler follower"
Like most Americans, I live in a state where my vote won't matter and I'm keeping my conscience clean. This one is just a bridge way too far for me. I think I would probably reconsider if Rashida Tlaib endorsed Kamala, but I don't think she will or should.
The amount that would have to be different for her to do that is staggering. I'm shocked she can still stay in the party/be allowed to stay.
Liberals don't understand that nothing will be better under Harris
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voting is not politics, reading is not politics, make fun of him. If your state loses by 1 vote, tell him he should have gone with a better argument (like 10k donation to rcs)
P.s. (in the realm of absurdist arguments) there is a higher chance that some hot palestinian lady or mma fighter will make trumpo bomb tel aviv, than that kamala will not listen to some bloodless mormon sicko. That's ignoring euros wouldn't go that far along with trumpo. Domestically she would do jack shit cause of the senate anyway
The person who first told me to read Mao, which got me into Marxism-Leninism in general, has become totally incoherent during the pandemic. The difference between us is that I have experience participating in organizations and seeing them fail the marginalized up close, and I experienced some of the same relief Hồ Chí Minh described as I took in Marxism Leninism, but my friend's individualist tendencies have not exposed them enough to the fatal downsides of meandering eclecticism. They are now an antivaxxer who sees all public health as draconian, no AES are good enough for them, just sort of stuck at the Chomsky and Foucault despair dead end.
