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this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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No, the hard left doesn't want Trump. Drag is hard left and wants Kamala in office. lemmy.ml users aren't hard left, they're leninists, which is moderate left. About the same amount of left as social democrats.
Calling Leninism "moderate left" is like calling Project 2025 "moderate right".
Drag apologises. Drag will follow your advice and call Leninism far right.
Leninists are not hard left wing. And fascist / project 2025 are not hard right wing. The thing to understand with authoritarians. Is that they are only hard authoritarian. Nothing more nothing less. Anything outside of that can be changed at a snap of the fingers.
Need proof? Look at any government based around the concepts of marxist Leninism. Brutally socially oppressive. Creating heavily stratified classes and an inescapable Nation. Things pretty much counter to every actual left-wing ideology. Or look at any Western capitalist nation. Every single one currently fending off populist fascists. Who want to oppress minority groups and use the government to rigidly stratify Society under the boot of an inescapable nation. Pretty much counter to all the talk of Liberty and freedom of right wing ideologies . All because their actual hard right liberal governments refuse to compromise and Budge left in any fashion to address the needs of the people.
Fascism is the dictionary definition of far-right politics. You'd be hard pressed to name a similarly prominent political ideology that is even father to the right than fascism. Likewise, Leninism's revolutionary ideals place the ideology in the far left, despite its implementations not achieving those ideals. An ideology being authoritarian doesn't make it moderate on the left-right scale. Instead, the more authoritarian governments tend to be hard left/right instead of moderate left/right.
I have to disagree about right-wing ideology being about "liberty and freedom". That's the realm of libertarianism, not right-wing politics. Libertarians in the U.S. tend to be right-wing, but libertarianism and right-wing politics are distinct ideologies. Right-wing politics emphasize traditional values, nationalism, and hierarchial social structures.
And? Wikipedia isn't a source. Even the Nazis implemented the sorts of policies many socialists. Myself included support. They just excluded everyone that wasn't part of their ubermensch. Which leftist/socialists wouldn't. The sorts of things plenty of far right economic-liberals are actively trying to dismantle completely in the US.
Before we go any further, let's attempt to not talk past each other. If you are using a political spectrum with a single axis. I am not. Honestly, I'm not even sure 2 axis can accurately represented the political spectrum. But it is far better than kindergarten terms of left and right. But let's assume a basic two axis plot. That's very common all over the internet. Where left is socialism right as capitalism is authoritarian and down is libertarian. The more authoritarian you are. The less Concepts like left and right matter to you. You are focused only on power. Thus the further authoritarian you go live More Everything converges to a single point. Where policy is whatever it takes for you to hold power. Which is why I point out to you that they aren't significantly left or right. They are authoritarian.
I think the other issue is that you are taking people at their word. But not paying attention to what they do. The words of a politician are worthless. The words of a shyster grifter trying to push a dogmatic ideological framework on you are somehow worth less. If you take Trump at his word. He's the best guy you'll ever meet. A real stand-up guy. I think you and I both know you would be a fool to do that. Just like capitalism talks about all this Pie in the Sky bullshit that doesn't happen. Leninism does the exact same. To a worse extent even.
And finally everyone claims their ideology is about freedom and liberty. The catch is it's only for their in-group. For those on the right it's freedom and liberty for those with the resources to engage with the economy. On the left it's freedom and liberty for society. The catch is where they fall along the authoritarian libertarian Spectrum. Anarchists, libertarians, and communists being extremely left and explicitly including absolutely everyone. Big L Libertarians/economics liberals are extreme right wing crazy capitalist. Pushing capitalism into places it just doesn't even make sense. Because it's what they do. Liberal Democrats are much more libertarian than conservative republicans. Big L Libertarians are somewhere in between the two of them. But they are all far right. And have a much narrower inclusion for "society". If you dare criticize or insult the Vanguard party or fascist leadership. They will outright kill you or in prison you. Kicking you clear out of society.
Need I remind you this year China sentenced someone to a year imprisonment for wearing a mother fucking shirt. Not going to lie economic liberals like Republicans and Democrats are pretty fucked up. But you don't see people being jailed for wearing let's go Brandon t-shirts. And there's no equivalent on the Democrat side to even cite. Though I'm sure Republicans who Trend fascist would love to jail someone for wearing anything that insulted Republicans or Trump. Thank God they don't have the power to yet.
You're calling fascists "moderate right" and liberal democrats "far-right" because Nazis did some things that you agree with? What exactly did the Nazis do that makes you think fascism is more moderate on the left-right axis than liberal democracy? It looks like you're either completely ignoring the social policies of fascism, or your understanding of the terms "moderate right" and "far-right" is way out of line with how most people understand them.
I'll take Wikipedia over a Lemmy comment with no sources that is arguing that fascism is more moderate than it actually is. The Wikipedia articles I linked to are cited, and the citations look very credible to me.
(I'm fully aware of the two-axis political model you mentioned, which is why I distinguished libertarianism from right-wing politics even though libertarians in the U.S. tend to be right-wing.)
No. Ideologically authoritarians aren't left or right in any meaningful sense. Let alone moderate. it's got nothing to do with me. Everything to do with basic facts and their actions. You're thinking of someone else who implied they were "moderate"
Down votes from buthurt Leninists and politically naive westerners isn't anything to value. But anyhow I tried sincerely to engage with you and have an honest discussion. And you just weren't having it. So you have fun believing stuff just because it's popular or that it's what someone told you. Don't bother thinking for yourself it's too much trouble.
Obviously, I am thinking for myself by rejecting your argument that fascism is "not hard right wing". And you still haven't provided any sources for your argument. It's clear to me that fascism is both far-right and authoritarian, and being authoritarian doesn't prevent fascism from being far-right.
Relative to what, Maoists? Ultraleftists? Leftcoms?
Anarchists.
Is Anarchism when one supports the US government?
No. Anarchism is when you try to prevent the US government from getting even worse. Leninism is when you stick your head in the sand and pretend you can ignore the flaws in the electoral system and the sacrifices demanded of us.
I'm not sure drag knows what anarchy is...
By enthusiastically supporting neoliberal genocidaires in bourgeois elections.
Leninism does not ignore the flaws of bourgeois electoralism. Lenin wrote a whole book called "Left Communism: an Infantile Disorder" which is precisely about people refusing to participate in the existing political system.
Theory
Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?
It is with the utmost contempt—and the utmost levity—that the German “Left” Communists reply to this question in the negative. Their arguments? In the passage quoted above we read:
This is said with ridiculous pretentiousness, and is patently wrong. “Reversion” to parliamentarianism, forsooth! Perhaps there is already a Soviet republic in Germany? It does not look like it! How, then, can one speak of “reversion”? Is this not an empty phrase?
Parliamentarianism has become “historically obsolete”. That is true in the propaganda sense. However, everybody knows that this is still a far cry from overcoming it in practice. Capitalism could have been declared—and with full justice—to be “historically obsolete” many decades ago, but that does not at all remove the need for a very long and very persistent struggle on the basis of capitalism. Parliamentarianism is “historically obsolete” from the standpoint of world history, i.e., the era of bourgeois parliamentarianism is over, and the era of the proletarian dictatorship has begun. That is incontestable. But world history is counted in decades. Ten or twenty years earlier or later makes no difference when measured with the yardstick of world history; from the standpoint of world history it is a trifle that cannot be considered even approximately. But for that very reason, it is a glaring theoretical error to apply the yardstick of world history to practical politics.
However, what he argued for was not entryism into liberal parties, but rather using the elections to build a Marxist party that could control it's message and use the opportunity to organize and build power outside of the electoral structure.
Lenin didn't live in America. If you try to use Russian electoral tactics in America, you'll fail. It's like trying to send the fleet to broadside Houston. Adapt your strategies to the terrain. You can't just pretend that the USA is Russia.
Does drag think that Russia under the Tsar was more democratic than the US today?
In any case, my position on voting third party is not because of what Lenin wrote, I merely wanted to clarify that Lenin's stance was not consistent with how drag characterized Leninism. I'm voting third party based on my own assessment of the situation, and I was a third party voter before ever encountering Lenin.
Drag thinks the precise opposite. That the parties Lenin discussed weren't electoral parties. The meaning of the word party back then isn't the same as now. Nowadays parties compete in electoralism. Organisations like Extinction Rebellion or the Proud Boys, which operate outside the electoral system, are not what we would call parties today. And yet Lenin's "parties" are more similar to XR than to the Greens. Drag thinks you've been misled by a bad translation from the English of a century ago to the English of today.
Drag 100% agrees with the strategy of creating socialist organisations outside of the government. Creating socialist organisations inside the government is more complicated. It's good in most places, but not in America. And it isn't what Lenin told you to do.
I don't think drag read what I cited, so I will link it again. Literally the title says, "Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?" which he answers in the affirmative.
More
Does drag have any basis for what drag just claimed, that the parties Lenin discussed were not parties that participated in electoral processes? Or did drag just make it up, in direct contradiction to what Lenin actually said, which I already cited to drag?
Drag Googled "politics in tsarist Russia", went to Wikipedia and read it was a monarchy. Drag read about one of the socialist parties and saw no mention of votes or seats.
Drag didn't see any blue on your comment. You hid it inside a spoiler. Drag didn't notice the drop down and thought it was a heading. Don't hide things you want drag to read.
When I post paragraphs of theory, I put it behind a spoiler out of courtesy to people who might feel that it's spamming up the thread. That doesn't mean drag should ignore it when drag is uninformed about the subject matter and I'm providing drag information about it.
The fact that Russia was a monarchy does not preclude the existence of representative bodies. The Duma was first established in 1905, in response to a revolution that year. This is really basic stuff.
Drag just doesn't think Russian history is very important. Drag spends more time learning about new world indigenous politics, culture, and metaphysics. If you want to learn about communism, don't go to Russia. Go to Australia. Australians did it for 60,000 years, and Russians couldn't even manage to do it for 1. Drag is reading Kayanerenko;wa: The Great Law Of Peace, about the politics of the Haudenosaunee people.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/twinrabbit-stolen-anarchy Here is a transcript of a youtube video about how Marx, Engels, and the rest of those white men culturally appropriated communism from Turtle Islanders. Drag values the work they have done trying to bring about communism, but drag prefers firsthand wisdom over secondhand. Drag thinks reading Lenin is a waste of time when you could be reading the philosophy of people who have lived in actual communist societies.
Drag is free to say that reading Lenin is a waste of time, but don't then try to tell me I'm wrong about Lenin when drag doesn't know very basic things about Lenin's positions or conditions.
Drag didn't say you're wrong about Lenin. Drag said you're wrong about the US electoral system.