YOU are speaking!
Have you made any poignant commentary on the recent election in the U.S.? Do you have a good response to liberals who are upset with the results or process of the election? Have you written or seen something as a comment reply/post that you think has standalone value? Did you see a new take or analysis you hadn’t previously considered?
Whether it’s a long idea with lots of context, or a short and sweet one liner, we want those thoughts aggregated here. This post is intended to be a resource for comrades to draw from when having actual discussions outside of Hexbear both online or IRL regarding the election.
Consider this a mini-effortpost aggregator. This is not for shitposts, but humor is completely acceptable if it helps make the point.
My only thoughts are:
In America currently life is bad for most people. The corporations are rat fucking society, poring pollutants into the water supply and laying off staff to save costs. Prices are rising and opportunities are falling. For many men they feel like DEI and wokeness are attacking their prior advantage to get those dwindling opportunities and the bad news is they’re right. Access to opportunity is a zero sum game. Extending opportunity to marginalised groups does indeed reduce your own current unfair access to opportunities. The good news is that opportunity itself is not zero sum. Progressive policy can make new opportunities and expand the pool.
Your political choices are as follows: Liberalism just wishes to stabilise the current misery. As Joe Biden said nothing will fundamentally change. No new opportunities or prosperity will be made for you under liberalism. Just continued extraction from the capitalist vultures.
Facism wants you to fight your fellow citizens for the scraps of a burning economy. No new opportunity for you here either, just the chance to tread on the backs of your fellow man to get the scraps from the cooperate table. And the pool of opportunity will continue to shrink as more wealth is extracted. Sure you may get the scraps today, but when those scraps run out? Perhaps it’s your turn to be trod on.
Only socialism actually wants to make life better for everyone. It wants to give everyone access to a better future. It wants to build and work towards wealth for all people not just the corporate class of vampires. End the capitalist rent seeking that sucks the life out of society. Build things for public good. Bring back jobs even if they’re not as competitive as foreign Labour. Capital cannot do that, that would be sub optimal behaviour for maximum profit. Socialism doesn’t care, it can do that if it benefits the people.
Yeah, I mean, everyone here knows all this and I do agree. However, somewhere along the line our universal project has become alienating to men and a universal project shouldn't be alienating to half of the human race. It's a real problem that deserves to be thought about. What is it about left and liberal culture that is so unappealing? I think we need to articulate a left wing, emancipatory vision for masculinity and it's role in radical culture. I mean it's that or just say we don't care about them, that has no place in the left??
Re: what is it about left and liberal culture that’s so unappealing:
At risk of upsetting people, I suspect because the woke scold is a real thing. Frankly a lot of the people you meet who push DEI and other woke issues are some of the most joyless unfunny self righteous bores you could hope to meet. In my workplace they’re usually terminal libs pushing “Pride by Lockheed Martin” brand corporate inclusion whose method for affecting change is just pure idealism with zero steps to address the material reasons for inequality. Likewise if you read and religiously follow the lessons in Mao’s Combat Liberalism you will be completely unbearable to be around.
I think the problem is people have grown to associate leftist ideals and the ideals of actually progressive policy with this particular brand of nagging. And it’s just not cool or attractive. I don’t know the solution here. In the past I thought the ‘dirtbag’ left would be a good tool to warm people to leftism without being off putting. Personally I try to take the rough with the smooth. Like if someone is using some vaguely problematic language but their point is a progressive one, I’ll let the language slide. But If someone is just being shitty e.g. transphobic I’ll call them out, but if I’m calling someone out I try not to be sanctimonious about it. “Harry I’m not being funny but since when do you give a fuck about women’s sports? Name one female athlete… right, stop being a dick and repeating some shit you heard on tictok”
The easiest way is to update Soviet and Maoist iconography. Show healthy, attractive equals working together on great things. Imply Communism will achieve this for them specifically. These chuds are deeply unhappy people and if you can show them a way out when Trump disillusions them about being the master race, they'll jump.
You listen to them and hear them articulate what they want and it's mostly freedom from want and from social despair. The racism and chuddery is mostly false consciousness
That's a good idea.
I don’t have a direct answer and I am not this demographic. But today I was thinking about how amazing I felt for about one week in 2020 before Bernie was ratfucked. Hope and solidarity is a hell of a drug. Imagine how it feels to be part of an actual revolutionary movement. So we need to do the work and organize it.
Disclaimer, I know Bernie is a Western chauvinist but i didn’t fully grasp that then and it’s not about him anyway.
For sure. Idk either.