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The democrats are controlled opposition. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 2 days ago by irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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TranscriptThe "For the better", also known as Anakin and Padme 4-Panel and Clueless Padme meme. The first panel shows a guy saying "You should vote dem and push them to be better." The second panel shows another person saying "So you're going to push them to be better after you vote?". The third panel shows the first person saying nothing and staring. The last one shows the second person with a concerned look on her face saying "you're going to push them to be better after you vote?".

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[-] RedPandaRaider@feddit.org 47 points 2 days ago

They're no opposition at all. They're an organisation of and for the ruling class.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 23 points 2 days ago

I mean, it's a big party and there's a lot of different members with a lot of different takes that exist on a wide spectrum.

But we watched politicians like AOC and Warren get chewed up. And we watched politicians like Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman get spat out. We're watching the folks who were crying "Our Party Needs To Win More Young Men To Beat Donald Trump" turn and piss all over Zohran Mamdani, a candidate who has been absolutely magnetic to anti-Trump young men.

There's a real contradiction between the folks voting Team Blue and the folks claiming to represent those voters. Until that contradiction is reconciled, there can't be a united front against fascism.

[-] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

vote blue no matyer who!

Until lefty slips through a primary. Then the machine backs literally anyone else.

[-] RedPandaRaider@feddit.org 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

There can be no united front with any liberals. They will use the first opportunity they get to betray any such united front and help the fascists out. Please learn that from history, we need not repeat it.

No liberal organisation is in our best interest. The only thing that helps against fascism are left organisations, extra-parliamentary opposition and extra-legal action.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

There can be no united front with any liberals.

FFS, even Mao and Lenin didn't think that way. But then they didn't see the lay liberal as a serious impediment to their efforts at de-colonization. They saw them as an impediment to the yeoman's work of reorganizing the body public on a mass scale. And they addressed the impediment through Mass Line politics and iterative, experimental reforms.

No liberal organisation is in our best interest.

Liberals are going to organize whether you want them to or not. And in a country as heavily weighted towards older, liberally educated service sector professionals as your average western state, you're going to get a lot of them popping up under every regime of any political valiance.

Conservatives have spent 60 years building a media and a body politic that manipulates liberals into supporting their agenda. Leftists will have to learn to be at least as persuasive and compelling. Because liberalism isn't something you can ignore. And the western leftist movement isn't in any position to call the shots. The whole point of a Vanguard Party is to spearhead a revolutionary program that can sway and mobilize the body public. It isn't going to be able to staff every bureaucratic position, much less to impose a universal orthodoxy on everyone, nor should it try.

[-] RedPandaRaider@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Nothing do I ever have in common with the cause of the class enemy - Bertolt Brecht

Liberals and the democratic party are class enemies. Mao and Lenin very well did see the threat of the liberals and their treachery. Lenin quite literally lived through those times when in Germany liberals used proto-fascists to murder socialists and suppress the revolution there.

Liberals can organize all they want. They'll still fail and hand power to fascists eventually. Let the American scum suffer their fate.

They will always be our enemies. The only way any kind of temporary united front will work is if liberals accept to work beneath us, not the other way around. If democrats were willing to follow a communist party for an united front, then it would be acceptable for the time being. But we should never let liberals lead any such endeavour. Because this strengthens them as well. And when all is well and done we need to exterminate liberals along with any fascists and other reactionaries. No united front has ever lead to socialism.

We're far better off organising on our own. Our own mass parties need to lead to the establishment of vanguard parties. Or do you really think liberals will allow a Marxist vanguard to take the lead of any uprising or on the political stage at large?

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Liberals and the democratic party are class enemies.

The vast majority of liberals and the bulk of the Democratic (and much of the Republican) rank-and-file are the same working class schlubs you'll find at any DSA meeting. They're all still proles, subject to the same degradation of the industrial process as any proper socialist. Their understanding of the world differs, but their material conditions are much the same. Forming a mass line necessarily minds finding common causes that liberals and leftists can unify under, whether it is an anti-war movement or environmental activism or a civil rights crusade.

Liberals can organize all they want. They’ll still fail and hand power to fascists eventually.

Organizations of every stripe can and do fail. Fascism, as a tendency, is an eternal existential threat. This isn't an excuse to distance yourself from your friends, your family, and your neighbors on ideological grounds.

We’re far better off organising on our own.

Vanguards are a great way of mobilizing a small number of committed activists to radical action. But the point of the vanguard is to lead the body public, not to fight the body public.

[-] RedPandaRaider@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Ignorance is no excuse in the court of law. It should be no different for ideological matters. Liberals choose to become class traitors or were already class enemies by being born not into the working class. They should suffer the consequences of that choice.

Also we're not just talking about individual people but a political party. It doesn't matter who the voters are, the party leadership is class enemies, they aren't working class, the party itself is designed as capitalist party. No compromise should ever be made with those. As quoted before we have nothing in common with the cause of the class enemy. Ever.

I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of a mass line or rather what purpose it serves for us. A mass line that is not lead by Marxists will ultimately benefit those who are not Marxists the most. That is a bad deal for us. Mass lines only work with a communist party in power already.

Take a look into recent history with the Occupy Wallstreet protests for example. They all amounted to nothing and fizzled out because they were "liberalised".

Lastly the vanguard doesn't fight the public body. It's not what I propose either. The public body is not liberals. Those are a parasite inside the public body that needs to be removed. You're following the enemy's logic by equating liberalism with the people.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Ignorance is no excuse in the court of law.

I wish someone would tell the SEC.

A mass line that is not lead by Marxists will ultimately benefit those who are not Marxists the most.

Which is, again, the purpose of a Vanguard movement.

At the same time, vanguards need to accrue power and public exposure over time. It doesn't happen overnight.

You will inevitably have to deal with people who enjoy more authority, access more resources, and command a larger audience than you, who aren't Maoists.

How do you deal with them? Throw hands? Pretend they don't exist?

[-] RedPandaRaider@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You do not acquire power by handing it over to liberals. That quite in the contrary depowers us more.

As I said we need our own mass parties that are lead by us, not liberal parties or movements.

Take a look at other countries. In the UK Corbyn is currently forming his own party and drawing in great numbers after he was slandered out of Labour leadership.

In Germany Sarah Wagenknecht, long term former leader of the communist platform within the left party, is forming her own populist mass party.

In France the new popular front has been formed under left and not liberal leadership and won the elections.

Joining fold with the democrats is not building your own mass line. It makes you a collaborator in building a mass line for liberals.

Also dealing with class enemies is only something that can be truly done once you've consolidated power. Then it doesn't matter how many of them there are as long as you have the means to hold onto power and decimate them. Every revolution needs its revolutionary terror to take care of counter-revolutionaries.

The goal is not to take part and win in bourgeois elections. That is systematically impossible actually. Taking part in those elections only servers as a platform to reach more people. You don't need an actual majority for a successful revolution or coup. The Bolsheviks did not have the majority if you look at the first Russian elections after the overthrow of the Tsar, yet they still won the civil war.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

You do not acquire power by handing it over to liberals.

Leftists don't have power to hand. You make it sound like leftist leaders are already in power.

[-] RedPandaRaider@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

We never will have power if we hand it to liberals at the first chance.

Building and leading a mass movement is power.

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[-] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 27 points 2 days ago

DNC would rather have Trump elected than Bernie...

Never forgot how this shit started.

DNC komisasars view the democratic voter as cattle they own.

Sadly most of them accept it 🤡

[-] _cryptagion@anarchist.nexus 2 points 6 hours ago

people don't want to take personal responsibility for the policies their vote helps enact. they would rather just turn off and do whatever the DNC tells them to, because then it's not their fault that democrats are actively working to kill innocent kids in Gaza.

and if you didn't vote? well don't you know trump wants to kill the kids faster? better that the instead be killed slower by dems, it's more humane.

[-] zbyte64@awful.systems 12 points 2 days ago

Voting in our system is like choosing the boss for the final boss fight. So yeah, if you're in a place where your vote could make a difference, vote Dem, but never stop raising hell.

[-] WillStealYourUsername@piefed.blahaj.zone 17 points 2 days ago

You should vote dem and organize a real non-dem opposition, be it a third party or by getting people organized.

[-] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 2 days ago

True, I'm not opposed to people voting dem, if i were in america I would do it myself, but so many people just vote, and don't do any organising afterwards.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

You should vote dem

Okay, but two questions:

  • Is Eric Adams a Democrat?

  • Should I have voted for him 2021?

[-] Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Skip straight to voting justice for all party if you aren't in a contested district like 87% of Americans.

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[-] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago

If I could push the Dems at all I’d push most of them off a cliff.

[-] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

They are the more culturally liberal of the two Wall Street parties, essentially the "good" mobster to the Republican "bad" mobster á la "Vote for me and I'll try not to make things worse – for now. Or do you want my friend elephant over there to beat you up?"

(Of course they are lying, they are just far more gradual and self-cucking in their reaction)

They are the liberals covering for and collaborating with fascists. They have no issue with concentration border caps and with the pillage, rape and destruction of societies infinitely more valuable and cultured than theirs.
Just put some rainbow and BLM stickers on those bombers and border patrol trucks and everything is good and civilised again; they are the ones that protect you from "the backward barbarians" after all.
But when all that reactionary violence is funnelled inwards as well, when they loose their imperial privilige, they start to whine about "the downfall of our civilisation".

It disgusts me with such deep disdain, because they are just the keepers of capitalism, holding it nice and warm for as long as they can, until the ruling class requires the backup of fascism to "bring order" back into the world and upon the working class; just so that the cycle can begin again and again and again...

(and also two side rants:

  • Henry Ford was given the highest award a foreigner could get in fascist Germany, by Hitler himself mind you
  • There is nothing inherently progressive about being "LGBTQ+", you are not subversive, you are not "bringing society forward". You are reinforcing capitalism by making it more inclusive, you are just another consumer target group that will be disposed of once you become undesirable for the capitalists (so the fascists can have one more "common enemy" to rally against e.g.)

From an older comment of mine:

To quote Malcolm X:

The white liberal is the most dangerous thing in the entire wester hemisphere. He is the most deceitful, he’s like a fox. And a fox is always more dangerous in the forest than the wolf. You can see the wolf coming, you know what he is up to. But the fox will fool you. He comes at you with his mouth shaped in such a way, that even though you see his teeth, you think he is smiling.

All their supposed progress and opposition to capital only reinforces and propels capitalism, alleviating the need for fascism just for a little longer (which arises for the ruling classes when the majority of the population grows disillusioned with their lies, be they conservative or “progressive”). In the end only legitimizing the underlying framework (capitalism), without ever threatening it.

TL;DR: scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds

[-] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 days ago

👏more 👏 female 👏 drone 👏 pilots 👏

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 9 points 2 days ago

Just put some rainbow and BLM stickers on those bombers and border patrol trucks and everything is good and civilised again; they are the ones that protect you from "the backward barbarians" after all.

As a wise man once said.

[-] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 days ago

Not the nuance bomb 💀💀

(but muh "both sides")

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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
154 points (85.6% liked)

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