That is what I wonder. Don’t know about you guys, but I feel like a European patriot, even though this maybe does not make sense to some.
Being a true European patriot means to me: caring about all of the freedoms we have, our social democracies, is to value the open pluralist societies we developed since WW2, wanting to protect what the reactionaries want to take away from us, stop those who want to lock us all up, back in the small closed-minded nation-states we all come from, which will ultimately lick the boots of either US or China/Russia.
They are well organized, but what is the organization, the movement that fights against this ongoing attack on our shared values and mode of existence?
The post-WW2 Europe is an oasis of bliss in a world which is on fire, and we are all under attack. How can we fight against this destruction from the inside as well as from the outside ?
Communication is key, we can take lessons from USA. Their left wing tries to dehumanise their right wing. This backfired tremendously.
So, what we should do would be simply communicate with eachother.
The part that differentiate social democracy from Marxist Leninists is that we do not try to silence people.
I agree, especially in the sense that the other is also part of our society. I think it also helps to remind people in the end we are all sharing the political system that is our democracy.
Yeah I also believe that good communication is key. Communication with everyone we might even strongly disagree with, as long as they are not actually beyond that in their beliefs and are just mislead or uninformed etc., but well-meaning. Such people need to be somehow included and heard and not pushed away into the arms of the extremists…
Hahahaha, ‘the left was mean to the right in the US and now Trump is very angry 😭, lets not do the same and directly give them power in Europe 🥰’
I for too think the problem of US is there is too many Marxist Leninist in it… Damn Marxist Leninist they ruined it 😂😂😂
The thing you should take from this, is that when you keep antagonising people, they will hate you. 😁
I have no problem with people hating me, there’s some people I hate. if you expect everyone to love you in live you’re kind of naive or have no opinion whatsoever
You really think the American left dehumanises republican voters?
Let’s see: Democrats exclusively talk about “crossing the aisle” and bipartisanship. Bernie Sanders excessively highlights the importance of protecting low income middle Americans who work(ed) in manufacturing and other sectors that lean Republican voters, while trying to sneak in some “also no, minorities aren’t evil” rhetoric.
Old school GOP says gays are sinners, new school GOP/MAGA calls transgender folks pedophiles, liberals communist unemployed rioters, and ethnic minorities “freeloaders who should go back to their countries”.
What a load of shit saying that the American left wing is to blame for “dehumanising” the right wing. I don’t think the way to fight extreme far-right ideology that is currently, actively supporting horrible shit is to pamper them and call them angels and ignore the shit they’re doing.
And here’s some extra data to prove the point:
Source
I will clarify, I believe MAGA supporters are idiots. They are being duped into voting to gut the social services that blue states taxes pay for to help them avoid poverty, medical bankruptcy, and the effects of climate change. Their voter habits are led first and foremost by a desire to “own the libs”, anti-LGBTQ religion and parasitic megachurches, and plain old racism. I do not believe they’re evil, but they support some really evil stuff and we’re really fucking far down the (billionaire and Russian funded/influenced) propaganda and MAGA-cult of personality rabbit hole at this point that I’m not going to just sugar coat all the nonsense they do and that they support.
I want all republicans to be able to live dignified lives and get their fair share of America’s wealth. I want our federal government to support them with free education, free healthcare, free childcare, and honestly, a basic universal income. I know that red states will never have the money to pay for these things. I don’t care. I will happily pay higher taxes for them to have these things.
But they keep voting against it. Instead, they vote in people who want to send immigrants to El Salvadorean prison camps. They commit hate crimes against my race. They ban people from Muslim countries including impacting green card holders. They don’t see any problem with the current Republican administration accidentally (or not) deporting legal immigrants or sending deportation orders to US-born US citizens.
So don’t tell me that I, or the American left-wing who is a hell of a lot nicer than this, dehumanise the right. That’s a load of shit. We’re trying to make it so the federal government will raise our taxes to help take care of them, and every other American in the bottom 99%, instead of using racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and political-belief-polarizing rhetoric to gain support with the sole purpose of (traditionally) lowering taxes for corporations and the top 1% and (now) doing a shit-ton of insider trading and cutting down voter rights.
Almost none of this is comparable to EU politics. Maybe there’s examples here and there, but especially in Western Europe, this situation does not exist in Europe, so don’t even pretend like the average MAGA supporter is the same as a SD or FN or FdI voter.
Sorry what…? The US is quite literally taken over by fascists and fascist ideas and you claim that the biggest issue is that someone calls that out?
Also, your original claim was this:
Their left wing tries to dehumanise their right wing.
Seems like you moved the goal post. Calling someone fascist is not dehumanizing, even less so when they actually support fascist ideas.
That’s the laziest take imaginable with how much it’s publicly known that foreign, hostile nations use bot farms (now with AI) and literal armies of trolls to foment anger and polarization online.
Being a patriot is quite dumb if I may say so. And even dumber if you are a patriot for a imperialist and neoliberal organisation that even compared to a so-called liberal “democracy” is undemocratic. Instead of calling yourself a patriot you should read a book. And then call yourself something based on that. And please explain to me what freedoms one has in the EU. Freedom to pay insanely high rents? Freedom to have to chose to heat or eat? Freedom to be exploited by ones employer? I could go on like this forever. I would also like to know where the aforementioned is social and where there is democracy in the EU. And last but not least I would like to know in how far the EU is open. To my knowledge everywhere in the EU the marginalized are still marginalized.
Are you one of those “tankies” everyone is talking about here on Lemmy?
And how do you know whether I read “some books” or not? Could it maybe just be that I just don’t accept their conclusions, question the suggested alternative or the way to get there?
Do you think that either you become enlightened by reading them, or you must be dumb or the enemy?
And maybe that does say more about you thank about me?
Let’s better say what I do accept. I have read Marx and accept his analysis of dynamics of capital as correct, it’s hard not to see that it is spot-on. I accept the general paradigm that the foundation of all such dynamics is the underlying material conditions, i.e. wealth inequality, which leads to power inequality. He however never outlined a clear way out.
I read enough secondary literature about whatever people tried to build on Marx as ways out and have seen enough of evidence against “real existing socialism” and have first-hand family experience from this system. I know all the objections that it was state capitalism or whatever, but I am pessimistic about human nature.
Actual socialism emerging from a revolution and whatever leadership to stay uncorrupted instead of eventually seizing power seems very utopian and unlikely to me, just as utopian and naive as anarchists believe that self-organized structures will not degenerate back to capitalistic tribalism with a few extra steps that will just redistribute the power a little bit and new opportunists to win the next round.
You misunderstood my “European patriotism” (in quotes!), because I never said anything about loving or approving everything done by the organisation you criticize (EU). What I was talking about was the ethos of wanting to protect the least shitty system I see anywhere on earth right now, which is deployed most successfully around Europe-the-continent, the “real existing faulty bureaucratic democracy”.
You seem to be of the opinion that it needs to be dismantled and replaced by something else. The right extremists say the same. The problem is that it’s easy to call for destruction but it’s difficult to build. All I see is “we need to tear it down… And then we’ll somehow magically build something new from scratch”.
I am a software developer by profession. You know how this works? You have to work with shitty systems other people you despise built over decades. I wish I could throw it all into the garbage and just build from scratch. But unlike politics, where talk is cheap, here I can see and quantify how much fucking work it is both technically and socially. It’s just like wanting to “just build a different sky scraper” without understanding anything about engineering. You can try, and probably will end up with another flavor if ugly mess. You also need to (re)educate other developers, you need to convince people, and finally the users need to either not be bothered by your “improvements” and you cannot allow such a long down time or reconstruction phase because the outside world is not waiting for you to get your shit together.
Now, I think politics is exactly the same. Law is the code of society, and developers and users need to buy into different paradigms I.e. accept other values and standards and possibly form of organization. I don’t see any proposed alternative being even close to have a clear realistic path, except of a strong faith that “it somehow will work out”. I doubt that it works that way. History works incrementally, and complex systems become incrementally fucked up, does not matter where you start.
The radical left is losing against the fascists because the fascists learned how to incrementally win mind-share of the people and hide it’s radical nature, while the radical left is continuing to engage in black and white thinking and pushing regular people away.
That leads me to the hypothesis that the only way to fix the system is actually good people low-key moving up in power and tweaking it from the inside, that means the reverse direction of what is happening right now.
Then I believe we need “pro-social propaganda”, working in a subtle way like the capitalistic matrix, which means that you have to win back the media. If you have the media, you can win the hearts and minds of people.
The classic approach of the left only works in a society where the majority is in such distress that they are open to extreme changes and have nothing to lose. But the system we are in is a system of “good enough”.
So I don’t believe in the tactics of the radical left and I don’t believe in the existence of a solid plan, there is at most a “concept of a plan”, in the words of a well-known dictator. I doubt the practical experience and competence of radical left thinkers and intellectuals, who have never worked inside a complex system such as academia or a company and have a simplistic idea of “change management” for social, bureaucratic and technical structures. Being able to organize some demonstration or violent resistance to break something does not necessarily correlate with the ability to build something better in its place and might not justify possible damage done in between.
So what is the way forward? I have no idea. But that is why I hope for some genuine and smartly executed “reformist” movement and would not expect any good outcomes from naive “revolutionary” ambitions. The revolutionary left is ultimately also a collection of populist movements, in the sense of promising simple answers to complex problems.
What does that make me ideologically? No idea. I don’t care about labels. Call it “pragmatic realistic left” or whatever.
Long term? Education: a broadly based, liberal education that makes the shared values understood and appreciated by most people, on the basis of good evidence, morality and reason. Without this, if everyone is taught and believes different, conflicting ideas, then there are no shared values to defend. Many organizations are involved but most significant are families, schools, colleges, universities, religious organizations and the media.
Short term? Justice, law and order that balances personal and collective interests. Without this, people will live in fear and desperation with immediate survival concerns being a priority over getting or giving a good education or making any personal sacrifice for the benefit of society. Also, sufficient resources for everyone so that no one is living in desperation and insecurity. This requires, among other things, preventing extremes of inequality of wealth and power. Not the elimination of inequality, but limiting and moderating it so that tyranny and jealous desperation are avoided. Again there are many organizations involved but most significant are the legislatures, courts, police and military.
Transparency and oversight are required for all these organizations, to ensure they are doing what they should, and freedom of thought and communication so that their behaviour, virtues and faults can be discovered, communicated, discussed and controlled. Whistleblowers and protections for them, and the media.
100% unconditional intolerance for fascists. You can’t give them a millimeter or they’ll take the entire country.
I suggest watching Thought Slime’s recent video if you wish to know how to effectively counteract fascists.
The gist is that you shouldn’t try to argue with them, they don’t care about reality. Don’t let them look reasonable by arguing as if they were, insist on pointing out they’re being assholes (which they are) and that anything they suggest is so obviously wrong it doesn’t even need to be explained why it’s wrong (which is true).
I have a rule: I don’t pronounce the word fascist (in private or in public, I don’t care) without prefixing it with “lurid” in English and in Italian appending “di merda” after fascista/i. As someone who had nightmares at night about them, given the testimony of my grandmother, I feel that not qualifying fascist people is somehow working in their favor.
The day I will see a politician using that rule in a TV interview I will know that we have again a chance.
Yeah you can’t argue with logic and reason of the other side does not accept this language and is always acting in bad faith. Engaging fascists civilly is always helping them gain ground. But not engaging with them becomes more difficult the more mind share they gain. How should not engaging look in practice? All of politics and media would need to stop giving them a platform at once. And again this is something we regular people don’t really have in our hands at all.
This just doesn’t have a any connection with reality. You know what you suggest is what has been done for 20 years and it has massively failed? In basically all western countries? Learn from your mistakes or be an idiot.
Make sure that you understand materialism and solidarity grounded in self interest if you want to win the working class. Get rid of idealists and identity politics (unless they’re working class or populist identity politics). Get your head around consequential ethics and how to set political priorities.
I recommend studying the 1930s strategy of the Swedish SAP.
The gist is that you shouldn’t try to argue with them, they don’t care about reality.
That may be true on a face to face level. In public, like on social media, it’s essential to keep arguing. Not to convince the person you’re arguing with, but to show other people reading that theirs is not the only perspective, nor is it the majority.
While you’re right, it’s incredibly frustrating when it’s near-impossible to convince onlookers on how the fascists operate on complete bad faith and we really should just not give them any time of day at all and ban them
I’ve had great difficulties in convincing people to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt, leading to the fascists further exploiting it for their own gain
This is quite literally the opposite of how you actually get people to support your cause. Ask any psychologist.
Shutting them out completely might work fine when they’re a tiny minority, but when in some cases a quarter of the population agrees with them enough to vote for them, doing that is simply impossible. They will have reach.
I also still think we need people throwing their morals about manipulating people to the wind and starting to peddle left wing conspiracy theories just like the right wingers are doing. For example with how perfectly it fits there really should be an actual movement behind the whole trump=the biblical antichrist thing in the US, but I’ve only seen it as satire in spaces that are already left wing.
Fight hunger, fight drug addiction, fight the destruction of the European values. This doesn’t work. Those are not targets. If you want to destroy something then you have to pinpoint a target that can be destroyed. “Destruction of the European values” is not a target.
However, do you really want to destroy something or don’t you rather want to build something?
It doesn’t come with the thrill of fear, but uniting people to build something is more sustainable.
In any case, take a close look and check if the oasis is not already burning or even spreading fire all over the world.
If you choose construction, make sure that the values you are going to implement are consistent and operational. Progressive means nothing but promising everybody that the world will develop according to the progess they envision. That won’t happen. There can only be one direction.
My personal opinion is that Pluralism makes it difficult to unite people. People follow their leaders. If the idea would be enough, this post would explode, there would be discussions until people agreed on what to do and then do it. In a pluralist society you have to convince all leaders, and they have to agree to get active at the same time.
So start with finding the leaders and let them convince their communities.
Good Points in general. But where did you read about me wanting to destroy something? The only thing I actively think we need to destroy is fascism and imbalance of power, which is slowly corrupting everything like mold.
Pluralistic democracy in that regard is a more abstract concept than a concrete agenda and it is hard to unite people for such an abstract value. This value should only be a proxy value for other concrete outcomes/values, ideally. But let’s turn it around. Only because it’s free and democratic does not guarantee it is effective and doing good. But without it, there will be no chance for good outcomes.
I agree with your general message, it probably would be better to have a cause “for” something good and not against something bad. Only sadly it seems that in practice people are easier to unite against something or out of fear of something.
You have to destroy something when you ‘fight against this destruction’. But you can’t fight abstract things, not even Fascism or imbalance.
Yes, people are easier to unite against something. The famous outside attacker. But how to fight fascism if it promises to fulfill what people want? People have to see that democracy is better. Maybe fight corruption, so that democracy can be at its best?
