cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10508286
(Stats that show boosting ICE funding is a bipartisan policy)
To all you libs on lemmy: "If it don't apply, let it fly" as they say. If you think this post isn't about you, it isn't about you. If this post is about you, maybe consider why that's an issue.
the libs dont want to hear they may have been abused by their party.
Yeah make an enemy of your allies. That's a great strategy
Are liberals allies to leftists, if liberalism supports the capitalist system? Leftists are aligned on overthrowing the present system, while liberals are opposed to that and seek to tweak it.
is who's under attack here liberals, or protestors who didn't realize how bad things were? i find the number of people who still don't see the problem frustrating, but we'll never get them to see the problem if the first thing we do when they start seeing the problem is call them fucking idiots.
i've seen way more success changing minds to leftism handing out soup to protests and saying "we're glad you're here" than i have when people hit the streets and they're immediately told to get back inside.
no one can undo the propaganda machine of the right but the left. we do not at present have the numbers to have the People Power to do the very most effective actions like large scale general strikes or even open rebellion with the hope of not being obliterated by the B-1 bombers that the air force has repositioned to loiter over our own air spaces. so we have to take the attitude of the mother goose teaching her goslings how the world works and violently attacking the threats to those goslings, not the goslings themselves for not knowing.
and so we're clear: i get the frustration. i feel it, too. but killing your inner pro-cop lib means realizing that there ever was an inner pro-cop lib in the first place because it was specifically nurtured by a media environment that can only really be escaped in a Mennonite community.
so go ahead and critique the people who aren't out doing anything. they're awful. but attacking people who woke up later than you isn't helpful and is in fact harmful
I'm not attacking people that aren't yet radicalized enough, or have been newly radicalized but haven't yet organized and/or read theory. It's important to attack liberalism itself, so that the radicalized liberals are freed from the shackles of that ideology. I'm more than aware of my liberal past, and I have to kill the liberal in my head every day.
It’s extremely common for people to combine their pre-existing biases from growing up and being educated in, working in, and living within the confines of bourgeois cultural hegemony with newly radicalized left-wing politics. Without going back and confronting our pre-existing stances, we actually end up warping our new radicalized beliefs to conform to our deeply instilled beliefs about existing socialism. This is how people that genuinely believe themselves to be socialists perpetuate liberal lines of logic and historical narratives.
Instead, we combat this through long periods of self-criticism and confrontation. We have to take our new knowledge, such as that of dialectical and historical materialism, and intentionally confront our pre-existing beliefs that came from liberalism. We all have this process to go through, and it’s never “complete,” either. It took me a long time to actually come around to supporting existing socialism, even after I began reading theory, because my frame of analysis was ultimately still liberal, and therefore my interpretations of theory were forced to fit in neatly with my existing world view, rather than uprooting the weeds and planting new seeds.
This process of dialectical growth and inward reflection is difficult and lengthy, which is why those that are in support of socialism tend to be far more knowledgable, well-read, and aren’t typically strangers to real political organizing. It takes tremendous energy to not only learn new information, but re-analyze existing conclusions that had faulty logic.
A handy analogy is looking at it through a computer program. If you have version 1 of a program spit out a bunch of outputs, and then fix a critical bug for version 2, you can’t just only rely on the new outputs, you have to confront the old outputs made with bad code and go through the new process. This is where people get tripped up ideologically.
We aren't at all immune to this, though, we aren't special people for having overcome it, and we aren't ever fully free of liberalism. We have to fight it daily.
part of where i'm coming from is that i mostly or even wholly agree with this message, however my understanding of effective propaganda tells me that the context of a message matters almost as much as the message itself. i appreciate and respect your desire to kill not just your inner liberal, put to also help others kill theirs, but what i see in this meme, and what the threadstarter saw as well, is an attack on a self organized resistance movement with a lot of potential to grow new leftists, kill inner liberals, and create an overall movement towards existing socialism.
my critique of your first comment was that i think it actually undermines your stated aims in your second comment because it creates the impression that the protestors should not be supported because it should be assumed the protestors are liberals.
is an attack on a self organized resistance movement with a lot of potential to grow new leftists, kill inner liberals, and create an overall movement towards existing socialism.
My goal is to connect that promising movement to the existing movement already organizing, to fold them into our shared movement. I appreciate your critique, but sometimes it is important for liberals to be exposed to genuine leftist theory and organizing work, otherwise they usually end up going back to brunch. I don't condemn the protestors, but instead those that protest and then let that be the end of their political journey.
Is anybody an ally of you if they have other goals that are not yours???
So deep. Much thought. Philosopher. Wow.
Truly, you also participate in society, you fucking donut.
When the primary task is overthrowing the present system of late-stage imperialism, yes! I'm a Marxist-Leninist, but I consider anarchists and anti-imperialists of all stripes to be great allies. The problem with liberalism is that the underlying goals entrench imperialism and capitalism, not weaken it.
But that's the thing. That isn't the primary task. That's your primary task. Some people just need to get out of their struggle before they can help others. And if you think that will create more enemies than allies to you, then... I think you are grossly misinformed or you are lying about what you actually want.
Like, you might as well say we shouldn't have freed the slaves unless we destroyed the institutions that created slavery. Incremental progress is still good, even if it's not preferred, and people's lives benefit from it.
We can fight for benefits, but as long as we remain trapped by bourgeois ideology like liberalism, rather than proletarian ideology like dialectical materialism, then we will be hopelessly trapped by their cultural hegemony. The reason liberalism is propogated is because it rationalizes and justifies the present capitalist system, and we cannot actually move on to a better world as long as we hold to its ways of thinking except by accident. When we take a more serious approach, and actually analyze society as it truly exists, we find that overthrowing the present state of things is necessary and unavoidable.
Abolition of slavery was absolutely a good thing, but we have to know why it happend. It was mostly due to the north's desire for more proletarians for industrial labor, it was a war between agricultural slavery and industrial wage labor. In the present moment, the largest contradiction is between imperialist countries and the imperialized, as well as domestically the issue of settler-colonialism. If we don't actually take steps to combat these, we will be left wondering why conditions keep deteriorating despite putting more liberals in office.
Ah... I think I see your problem now. You think nothing can happen unless the bourgeois will it. I, frankly, don't agree with that. I think you think the world is a lot more chess-like when it's really a lot more like poker with mostly idiots. That does explain why MLs want to go authoritarian to fix the problems, though.
Anyway, the reason why you're a fucking biscuit is you don't seem to be expressing ideas to convert liberals to your cause. You have written them off as unfixable, and, well, that sort of gives you fewer allies. How silly.
Ah… I think I see your problem now. You think nothing can happen unless the bourgeois will it.
No, not at all. My point is that liberalism itself supports the system of capitalism, and as such we need to shed it in order to make progress, as it's essentially how the bourgeoisie legitimizes itself.
I think you think the world is a lot more chess-like when it’s really a lot more like poker with mostly idiots.
The world isn't chess nor is it poker. Classes generally act rationally, in their own interest, and proliferate class ideology to protect their interests. Ruling class ideology is meant to perpetuate that ruling class, which is why proletarian ideology needs to replace bourgeois ideology.
That does explain why MLs want to go authoritarian to fix the problems, though.
I don't know what you mean by this. Marxists do agree with using states run by the working classes as a transitional phase to communism, but that doesn't mean "going authoritarian," but changing the class with authority from bourgeois to proletarian.
Anyway, the reason why you’re a fucking biscuit is you don’t seem to be expressing ideas to convert liberals to your cause. You have written them off as unfixable, and, well, that sort of gives you fewer allies. How silly.
I don't, though. I was a liberal once. I write off liberalism itself. As I explained elsewhere in this thread:
I'm not attacking people that aren't yet radicalized enough, or have been newly radicalized but haven't yet organized and/or read theory. It's important to attack liberalism itself, so that the radicalized liberals are freed from the shackles of that ideology. I'm more than aware of my liberal past, and I have to kill the liberal in my head every day.
It’s extremely common for people to combine their pre-existing biases from growing up and being educated in, working in, and living within the confines of bourgeois cultural hegemony with newly radicalized left-wing politics. Without going back and confronting our pre-existing stances, we actually end up warping our new radicalized beliefs to conform to our deeply instilled beliefs about existing socialism. This is how people that genuinely believe themselves to be socialists perpetuate liberal lines of logic and historical narratives.
Instead, we combat this through long periods of self-criticism and confrontation. We have to take our new knowledge, such as that of dialectical and historical materialism, and intentionally confront our pre-existing beliefs that came from liberalism. We all have this process to go through, and it’s never “complete,” either. It took me a long time to actually come around to supporting existing socialism, even after I began reading theory, because my frame of analysis was ultimately still liberal, and therefore my interpretations of theory were forced to fit in neatly with my existing world view, rather than uprooting the weeds and planting new seeds.
This process of dialectical growth and inward reflection is difficult and lengthy, which is why those that are in support of socialism tend to be far more knowledgable, well-read, and aren’t typically strangers to real political organizing. It takes tremendous energy to not only learn new information, but re-analyze existing conclusions that had faulty logic.
A handy analogy is looking at it through a computer program. If you have version 1 of a program spit out a bunch of outputs, and then fix a critical bug for version 2, you can’t just only rely on the new outputs, you have to confront the old outputs made with bad code and go through the new process. This is where people get tripped up ideologically.
We aren't at all immune to this, though, we aren't special people for having overcome it, and we aren't ever fully free of liberalism. We have to fight it daily.
This is the point I'm actually making. Radicalized liberals are comrades that have not yet become so, because they haven't yet shed their liberalism and as such ultimately go back to supporting the very system that oppresses them.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend etc
My point is that liberalism traps liberals into not actually fighting their real enemy, the capitalist class. Liberals exist as potential comrades, but without overcoming their liberalism they will end up supporting their own oppression.
Maybe I'm just mostly in lefty circles, but who the fuck wasn't mad until Renee Goode and Alex Pretti? I've been seeing constant rage against ice for a couple of years now atleast.
white middle class people, and then other middle class people. Do you not know anyone in their 40s or older with a family?
Completely agree, but I think with Goode and Pretti it gave our team a good hand to play. Like, "hey, all you All Lives Matter people. Where ya at?" and with Pretti specifically, it's like "Hey, all you 2A folk. Where the fuck ya at?"
I've been outraged and outspoken since the beginning, but these two incidents are really heavy hitting cards to play in order to expose hypocritical fascists. Not that it actually matters because these people are brainwashed mental gymists. But I like to think it at least puts cracks in their foundation. It's caused some amount of infighting, so that's a step in the right direction.
No, you're right, plenty were mad before too. There seems to be a new push lately on trying to make this a race issue to divide the left. I've seen a major uptick in this framing lately.
If someone favors ICE because it's a "race issue" they were never on our side to begin with.
You're right about that! But that's not what I meant.
What I mean is there's a seemingly organized effort to create infighting between those against ICE by attempting to create issues and sow discord. It distracts from the real conversation at hand. It's a common technique to fracture unity on an issue.
Who cares why people are protesting, as long as they are it's good?
Yeah. As I've seen someone else put it, "we're glad you're here" is far better than "what took you so long"
Until they go back to brunch after electing Gavin Newsom.
if somehow we make it all the way to a free and fair 2028 primary and gavin newsome is the nominee i will be a form of pissed you've never witnessed before. that dude is such a fuckin' unhelpful phonie. out here acting like Abigail Spanberger won Virginia because Virginians wanted neoliberalism. NO! Virginians already hated her when they voted for her, they only voted for her because the options offered were: ICE stays the same, or ICE gets way more violent. USW, UAW, and UMWA all refused to endorse her. Abigail Spanberger won despite not being liked, not because she was liked. but the DNC has refused to learn their lessons and eat their veggies for 18 years now. they took every losing lesson from Obama and jettisoned every winning lesson. ultimately, it comes down to that they are part of the conservative grift machine, but their grift is more subtle. the republican grift is to froth up anger and then demand money to go act on that anger. the democrat grift is to make money off losing.
it makes me so mad how many democrats are looking at 2025 election results and going "see! we don't have to be more progressive. we just have to not be donald trump" and it's like… goddammit, that's been loser behavior since 2008 when the tea party tranformed the republican party.
so anyway.
in summation.
fuck the liberal excellence brunch crowd. we won't get out of this thinking the crisis is over unless we get true systemic change, not just small trinkets
I never get the "we were doing it first" toxicity. Why should it matter why the newcomers were ignorant if they want to join the cause? Why create new enemies just to protect your "pure" reasons? That kind of separationism is exactly what keeps the ones you should focus on in power, and they want it that way. A divided resistance will fail.
I've been the first to be against "we've been first toxicity", get in line!
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low quality!
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" (read: Dengists) (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't irrationally idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
