this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Yeah, I would definitely have that snake on the floor too, I'm not standing shoulder to shoulder with an ancap, even if it is to beat on a tankie.
That tankie will stab you in the back as soon as the ancap is done.
Not with the tannerite I threw at both of them
I am pretending that the no step snek is representing left libertarians.
The an-com flag is already there. Left libertarian and anarcho communist are basically synonymous as far as I'm aware. Not to mention the gadsen flag has been a generally right wing symbol for a while now
Thus the word "pretending"
I would love to attend that livestream.
God i want a livestream of that!
something something horseshoe theory
I think it really depends on who you’re taking about when you say centrist.
“Gays have gone too far. Now they want to get married. I’m not against gays, but marriage is between a man and a woman” was/is a despicable “centrist” position.
“I’m not sure student loans forgiveness is the best long term solution to education costs. I think those trillions of dollars would be between spent on building schools, but it’s better than nothing” was/is common “centrist” position I don’t agree with but doesn’t bother me much.
It seems like there’s at least two definitions of centrist.
People who equate both parties policies at every turn are centrists in my mind.
In the mind of many others in the left, anyone slightly right of Sanders is a centrist. And I think that’s an entirely different definition.
The definitions are so opposed to each other that two people using the same word can be talking about something completely different.
they are in Europe.
also both centrist takes are stupid that you described.
The Overton window is a sliding scale.
And ya, both takes are hard to agree with, but one enables the trampling of civil rights, while the other simply has a separate view of how to use finite resources to solve a fiscal problem.
Anyone who equates those two takes os also quite “stupid.” Equating those two is a much worse take than the take about student loans forgiveness maybe not being the best way to address a national problem effecting hundreds of millions of citizens, that decades of neglect and misappropriation of tax funds created.
Also, Considering Biden is getting student loan forgiveness done, while sanders has not, the group that equates both parties, or moans at anyone left of sanders is doing the service of the centrist agenda, and in turn the right wing agenda.
Sanders is the chair of the committee in charge of student loans. He is also not the president.
Exactly. He’s not the president. And the person who is is getting the job done. Because sanders was not able to turn his candidacy into affect. And the Democratic Party “elites” put sanders in the role that he currently holds.
The two parties aren’t the same. Nuance about how to deal with the educational crisis of cost is not the enemy. Decades of neglecting education entirely is.
Btw: just so we are avoiding history revisionism. Student load forgiveness is being handled by the executive branch. Not the senate.
i think most of us are referring to the enlightened centrist that has no belief other than being 'in the middle' of the two prominent positions. people who don't want to rock the boat and are constantly looking for compromise no matter how abhorrent one position may be, like my uncle who wants me to get along with folks that literally want me as a queer person dead.
the real problem with being a 'moderate' or a 'centrist' is that it's a moving target depending on the prevailing political positions of the day. in reality, american democrats are the centrists, and pretty much everyone else is right wing.
This is something that I realized recently. There is no middle. Neutrality doesn't exist.
If you accept the way things work, you're complicit, if you don't accept them, you're not. End of the story.
yeah but i'm talking about the extremists (as in the horseshoe theory) not the overall ideology
Yes, people that aren't "equipped" with an all-emcompassing ideology that conveniently defines their whole worldview for an immediate opinion on everything or that don't happen to have vehement feelings on the issue-of-the-day are literally peasants amirite?
“Auth-Left” is an oxymoron. Stalinism is just another flavor of top-down oppression of the common people, and all such oppression is right-wing by definition.
Seems like every time the left is accused of anything, it's never actually the left that did it. It's always some nefarious actor. The left cannot and never has done anything wrong... except for not being left enough, of course.
I literally just linked you the historical definition of leftism. Those who supported the aristocracy were on the right; those who supported the people were on the left. Now tell me, do you mean to claim that Stalin supported his people, or do you agree with me that he supported only himself and his cronies? Because if it’s the latter, then by the aforementioned historical definition, he was not a leftist.
I never disputed your link on the origins of the term.
All I said is that it seems very convenient that the left cannot and never has done anything wrong other than not being left enough. You're either completely benevolent or you're not a leftist, by definition.
There is no act that can't be waived away as being "not actually left-wing."
What are you trying to say? That today's leftists are dishonest?
The word dishonest implies premeditation. I don't think today's leftists are evil or dumb. I think the hardcore leftists are in a well-intentioned trap that creates a dangerous and frankly annoying "us vs. them" mentality in which they are convinced, beyond rationale, that they are doing good, which is all that really matters to them.
It creates a left=moral good paradigm in their heads. Where, like I said, the left can't do anything wrong because the left=good.
I mean, look at how they talk about centrists, who are not really their enemy. They're supposed to be the people you try to persuade, but the left has gone so religiously dogmatic that even centrists are almost as bad as Nazis (e.i. right-wingers)
Look, I'm fundamentally with you. The right-wing is capable of terrible, horrific things. They're more dangerous historically. You'll get no argument from me man. Some of it makes me sick. I believe that morals and values should be a part of politics too. I'm no stranger to leftism either, I was extremely interested in it for quite a while.
But I know a trap when I see it. Clearly something is going here, fucking socio-economics is becoming a religion.
That's why I cited an objective, historical definition of leftism: so that I can say that no, the people you're talking about are not leftists, because they don't fit this definition. They may call themselves leftists, but that doesn't make it so, any more than Hitler calling himself a socialist, Stalin calling himself a communist, or North Korea calling itself a democratic people's republic makes it so.
The same goes for religion, by the way. Thumping the Bible doesn't make you a Christian. Loving thy neighbor does.
You're preoccupied with this French revolutionary definition of leftism as the ultimate sieve for what makes a leftist and I'm trying to make a point that today's leftism is a movement that isn't capable of self-criticism because it's become a religious movement as opposed to a political one. Things change, we don't live in revolutionary France.
I feel like we're talking past each other here... I wish the vulkan mind meld was a real thing so we can actually get somewhere with this.
Yes, because that was before the likes of Stalin and Mao tried to appropriate the term “leftism” for their own selfish purposes.
I'm trying to make a point that those are fake leftists.
The disagreement, as I understand it, is this: when a person wearing a label of virtue acts contrary to that label, you believe that corrupts the label, whereas I believe that makes the person unworthy of the label and refuse to recognize the person as having the label.