we like guns?
Most leftists, generally yes.
Doesn’t mean they like US style gun culture or obsessed with them. But the system leftists oppose is armed and has/will use those arms upon leftists that gain any significant amount of power.
Arm the oppressed.
We also know the difference between liberals and conservatives.
Liberals are formerly conservatives. Conservatives are now extremist/fascists.
Honestly, the “likes guns” part doesn’t work anywhere outside the US, if that. And that includes conservatives.
Internationally I’m pretty sure “hates Trump” would absolutely be in the center, too.
“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary” - Karl Marx
This quote applies to Marx’s time though. When armed workers would have had nearly the same arsenal as a professional military. When horse carriages and trains were the only way to move soldiers at all.
In the age of tanks, jets and missiles, do you seriously believe workers have the slightest chance against a military? It takes a single nuke to crush a revolution that is not supported by the military.
Oh, you don’t want to get biblical with 19th century political theory quotes or none of this chart makes sense, in the US or otherwise.
Kinda have to, since none of the “leftist” ideologies has any chance of hell of being bought into action without revolution.
Since revolution requires some degree of violence, and established states have access to not just man portable firearms, but bigger guns as well, then attempting to use violence to change said state without access to firearms is what you might call dumb. You might call it suicidal. You might call it a form of Darwinism whereby the truly stupid leftists get killed off by whatever government they’re going at so that the non-stupid leftists that are left breed smarter babies that will then realize that without equal access to arms, no populace can revolt.
I guess you don’t have to like guns. It is possible to dislike something immensely and still use it as a tool. Like toothpaste. It tastes weird, it’s not fun to use, but without it, you have no teeth eventually. Guns are like toothpaste, your squeeze them and weird things come out, but at least your teeth are clean.
To make a revolution you need the people on your side, not guns specifically. The bastille was torn down by hand. Just look at the USA 6 jan. They didn’t need guns, and thats fu-king USA!
If you needed guns to make a revolution, you’d probably need RPGs and tanks too.
They didn’t need guns on Jan 6 because there were traitors in major government offices - namely the White House and the Pentagon - who withheld the National Guard from mobilizing and reduced the number of police in the area that day.
There were soldiers ready and waiting, guns in hand, who were told to standby.
As a leftist who grew up with guns, I’m neutral on guns. individual gun ownership is historically meaningless. Only organized defense and resistance stands a chance against state violence. Our hobbies and consumer identities aren’t radical, and political struggle, which will need to be defended by organized armed resistance, is the only way to get to socialism, unless you’re a fan of that lib Stalin.
Well… recently some guy (definetly Hunter Biden and no-one else) hurt someone else real bad. now a lot of 'murricans are suddenly able to get treatment for things, where they previously couldn’t. So there is a possibility for limited change through single people with single weapons.
Though on the other hand, there previously was a daily quota of two americans being able to be shot, whithout anyone being interested even a slight bit.
There is a reason why 90% of politically active socialists are against adventurism. Maybe this one flies under the radar, it wouldn’t surprise me if the ruling class was as desensitized toward gun violence as the rest of us. It would also give us excellent ammunition if, over the killing of one CEO, there was suddenly all this social change called for by the capitalist class and outcry from the media, especially as our children practice active shooter drills at school. This guy was like the head of a company that is part of a much larger company that owns a bunch of insurance companies, and that CEO is still doing just fine. The insurance company is anecdotally approving more claims, but the system remains. We can’t say what changes will be, but they won’t be meaningful but in the short term, and they won’t last.
“All these revolutions only served to make the state stronger,” is arguably the most important quote of Marx because it addressed how class concessions are just subsumed by the body politic and become part of the apparatus of oppression itself. Don’t be a sucker, get organized if you want to create lasting change
I like any political map that triangulates liberals from the left and right.
And I love any one that properly omits libertarians.
I am getting more and more confused.
Liberty ≈ Freedom.
Liberal is someone beliveing in something adjacent to freedom. Libertarian is someone believing in something adjecent to freedom.
But I only hear bad things about liberals, alright I already knew 'Merricans are stupid, they get angry about a word while not even being autistic. But I also somethymes hear about libertarians. what the fuck is that supposed to be, especially compared to its namely cousin?
Well I know I’m not being entirely fair to the poor, old 'Murricans, there surely is something they all know about their system, that has not yet reached me. Still calling someone by one of your core tenets ('Murrica, land of the free, home to lady liberty…) and believing that to be an unterstandible slur sure is weird.
Sorry, Bud. The names are mostly just advertisements and not necessarily useful for understanding the underlying philosophy.
American Liberalism (capital ‘L’) is fluid over time at best in its philosophy, and is actively shifting to further elitist interests from a less charitable perspective. It often prioritises corporations over people and cherry picks which cases of violence are or aren’t acceptable by the state.
American Libertarianism (again, capital ‘L’) is Anarcho-capitalism, which believes the world would be a better place if the state was bordering on non-existent, and companies were allowed to operate completely unregulated.
Libertarianism isn’t nearly as extreme as anarcho capitalism. It argues for minimal government where possible, but still supports governments providing military and law enforcement, emergency services, etc. The libertarian party, for example, is basically what Republicans were pre-trump on fiscal and economic issues, but without any desire to restrict stuff like gay marriage or marijuana. A libertarian is as much an anarcho capitalist as a socialist is a communist (they’re not).
Libertarian has two different meanings, depending on who you talk two.
In the modern day, and unless they qualify it, “libertarianism = anarcho-capitalism”.
Classical libertarianism (sometimes left libertarianism, or libertarian socialism) is more akin to anarcho-syndicalism. Advocacy for ownership of the means of production via trade unions and the like, with the goal of obsoleting the state and capitalism, that kinda thing.
EDIT: Also, capital-L “Liberalism” in the US is more than a little bit of a departure from liberalism. It’s mostly evolved into a meaningless pejorative the far right uses against the center-left (and when I say that, I’m talking about center-left from an American perspective, so really more center-right)
what the fuck am I talking about?
well im confused. so what do you wanna do about it?
Leftist here: I swear to fuck if I hear one more Tankie put a “Trump winning is actually a good thing because Kamela’s literally the same person as Trump” card on the table with a “Actually North Korea is this amazing paradise and EVERYONE ON THE FUCKING PLANET is just pretending it’s awful. Source: Trust me bro!” stat booster
So help me God I will… Roll my eyes and drown my sorrows in another round of Dead By Daylight where I hope to find a Joshua in the lobby because I’m a Killer Main…
Seriously, why can’t we have unity like the Rightists do? I mean they just point and say “Look! It’s a gay!”, they all form in a line.
If I point and say “Look! It’s a fascist!”, the whole squad starts pointing at each other and somehow I’m “cancelled for being a rape apologist” because the way I pointed was actually a dog whistle because it vaguely resembled the ancient Anti-Black symbol called “Ligma” popularized in the year 19Dickety2 in response to white men being annoyed that black people could afford chewing gum or something… Which obviously everyone totally knows is a real thing!
I just want us to ya know, save the fucking world from Neolibs and Literal Nazis before we start doing purity tastes on each other. Like, can we wait to do the “Everyone in the group gets chronic backstab syndrome.” shit AFTER we win?
I mean fuck the Deadly Alliance had the fucking patience to wait till they killed the main cast, Raiden included, before that shit… and they’re literally Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, the exact two people I expect to constantly lose Among Us by reporting each other when they’re both the Imposter! In a SELF-REPORT! Because I’m reliving all of my negative experiences with other socialists, and when I’m angry I try to make the nerdiest references I can make while still ensuring there’s a chance for others to get them.
starts frothing, dies of self-inflicted rabies
I haven’t seen anyone say Trump winning is a good thing, nor have I seen anyone say the DPRK is a paradise (closest to that is people saying the DPRK has living standards around the level of Cuba these days). Where are you finding these people at significant enough numbers to cause you anguish? Legitimate question here, you’re calling for Left Unity but it seems like you’re misframing others at best, which goes against that ideal.
I will admit that I’m exaggerating out of frustration, but the idea that North Korea is “Actually a real nice place to live, preferable to America in some respects” is one I hear a lot (I do hear about China being a paradise)
And for the record I was kicked out of my local Socialist Chapter for refusing to endorse a Green Party Candidate who was openly transphobic and talking about nixing expanding healthcare access in favor of just “curing autism with crystals”, the head of which responded to by calling me a rape apologist, which doesn’t make any sense. (Also a white cisguy calling a transgirl a “Rape Apologist” for not going along with transphobia and ableism is sus)
I was hardly the only nay-sayer, he got a lot of backlash for supporting this person, but the fact that I wouldn’t play ball with one of my oppressors seemed to really piss in this guy’s cornflakes.
Wasn’t the only odd thing about the guy, he actually condemened Bernie during the 2020 primaries, citing a “Refusal to advocate for violence against the police” as “Proof that he just doesn’t care!”, when that was never a realistic thing to expect a candidate to do.
So I have dealt with a lot of crazy unreasonable types “on the front lines” so to speak.
Also I sadly have dealt with a lot of “Even though it means letting Trump win, we can’t lift a finger to help Biden/Hillary/Kamela because they’re literally not as bad as Trump on this one issue.”
My point still remains, can we please just focus on actually being productive before we turn on each other?
I can’t speak for the chapter you were a part of, but I think the idea that the DPRK isn’t a hellhole, actually, and is more like Cuba as an impoverished yet slowly improving society is a valid point to take against common allegations as such. The PRC is certainly no paradise either, but it has rapidly improved, and I think acknowledging that as well is also valid. I questioned what you alleged because I haven’t seen anyone say the DPRK is paradise, period, nor the idea of Trump being better than Harris.
But doesn’t that hyperbole get in the way of a desire for Left Unity? If someone says “Harris and Trump serve similar interests” and someone interprets that as “Trump is better than Harris, actually,” that fundamentally changes the point the person was making. Hyperbole is only useful as long as the quantitative change in a claim doesn’t change the fundamental equation, if it does, it becomes strawmanning.
It’s not that genocide wasn’t a dealbreaker, it’s that there was no “Don’t Do Genocide” option, it’s called “Harm Reduction”
Obviously I’m sorry about your friends, but if there was a no genocide option, I’d obviously have picked it.
So what’s Dead by Daylight about? Also any decentl places I could watch it without spending much?
Sorry if I didn’t make it clear. Dead By Daylight is a multiplayer horror game famous for its surprisingly deep story and for including crossover elements.
5 Players enter a match. 1 Killer (Which can be an original character made for DBD like Deathslinger or The Nurse, or a character from a famous game or movie such as Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street or Nemesis from Resident Evil) who hunts down the other four, and the other four are various survivors who must find a way to escape the map before being murdered to death by the killer.
As a Killer Main, I typically opt for the Killer Role and only play as a Survivor every now and then.
The game typically goes for 20 dollars on Steam, but is typically sold for 7 during sales.
Though it’s one of those dealies where if you’re there for the crossover content, you’ll need to pay real money.
I would heap written abuse upon you, but it’s true
Wait, why do leftists hate leftists?
It’s a joke, but “leftist” is such a wide term that it encompasses groups which don’t really want to do much with each other, such as anarchists, bernie-bros, and ~red fash~ tankies marxist-leninists. Anarchists tend to not hate anarchists for example.
No I don’t disagree with you! But you are still somewhat wrong! Hey social traitor, I’m splitting and creating my own leftist memes! These will be actual trotskyist memes, unlike your bourgeoisie-tainted memes!
rinse and repeat
Here we go again, an anarchist calling Marxists leninists “red fash”. What country destroyed Nazism, please remind us.
Most conservatives are able to band together regardless of whether another of them is too racist, or too capitalist. They’re able to look past flaws in that regard.
Meanwhile, we lefties fight among ourselves for not being left enough, or for being too left. It’s why there are very few leftist governments.
Nonsense. conservatives inflight and even kill each other all the fucking time. This is a myth promoted by “left unity” leftists, and “big tent” libs to force everyone to follow them.
Aye, they do, but when it comes to voting they unify.
Take the UK for example. Of our three main parties the Conservatives are, well, conservative, Labour are (ostensibly) leftwing, and Liberal Democrats are centre-left.
In the end, most of my 44 years have been spent under a series of Tory governments because leftists who don’t see Labour as left enough don’t vote out of protest, and leftists who see Labour as too left will vote Lib Dem. Meanwhile, those in the centre or on the right will vote Tory. Sure, there are far right parties here, but they’re mostly cranks and outright racists.
We only have a Labour government right now because the Tories went too lunatic and Starmer’s lot shifted enough to the centre to attract those who would vote LibDem.
Prior to our last election, I saw a whole bunch of fellow lefties going apeshite because Starmer isn’t leftwing enough, and still crying that Corbyn was fucked over (which, to be fair, he was), so much so that I genuinely feared for five more years of Tories reaming us. There was very little room for pragmatism.
The Republicans have bred a cult that makes up the core of their voting block, though. This is how Trump originally got into the primaries and then elected. He pulled the cultists away from their masters and they couldn’t control the new MAGA cult.
Both my grandfather before he died and my first boss had the same exact reaction if you asked who they were voting for. They’d look at you like you’d grown an extra head and reply, “I’m a Republican. I vote for the nominee.”
It is very easy for people without a credible shred of leftist thought to claim to be a leftist.
Challenging those people winds up being an example of ‘leftist infighting’.
So… a leftist and a tankie pretending to be a leftist, in a argument, basically…
