Welcome again to everybody. Make yourselves at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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POV: When you finally convince your friends to turn socialists.
I know he’s not a communist but honestly I have a soft spot for Melenchon. Would probably get couped by the French military in the fantasy of him winning the next election but still :p
Who needs AI when you have autism and a well developed pattern recognition so you can often successfully predict outcomes of certain situations
Sending hugs to all of you, hope you’re having a good day. ❤️
I wish it always rained, the sound of it is very soothing.
I think there might be more infighting in the firearms community then in the leftist ones
Which kind of infighting? Intellectual or physical? Because I think you mean the former /j
It’s weird how pop culture can work that I have the line “I’m tired, boss” in my head in spite of never having watched the movie it comes from and never (in recall memory) engaging much with memes about the line. But I guess I must have seen a meme of it at least once and it stuck in my head.
Its that moment from the Green Mile?
That is exactly how memes are supposed to work.
Rare Germany W (it wasnt the state)
I do have some two cents about the midterms in the US.
To be clear, I dont like the democrats. Not only for the obvious reasons but also personal ones related to my family and also local politics.
Anyway, I think this really should be a wakeup call for a lot of tailists. Not just in the USA [Maupin, Haz, A"C"P, etc.] But also like the BSW and WPB and CPGB [although I do understand the leaders of these parties are often opportunists in general and also somehow self defeatingly hateful {I’m looking at you Galloway}].
The democrats basically ran on an anti trump platform, and Talorico himself, to my knowledge, wasn’t doing the anti-trans dance democrats did during 2024, although honestly I dont know a lot of his political positions. But even in Florida they nearly elected a democratic socialist (who wasn’t given support by the dem establishment, shockerrrr)
What I mean is that, even in deeply conservative areas like Alabama, they’re able to elect democrats [including a transgender democrat] if thats their only option that they can do.
Ergo, principled socialist parties are able to win and shouldn’t focus on tailing social conservatives. I know this was obvious to a lot of people already but even I, a Trans woman, was kinda sympathetic to the general philosophy even if I didnt personally like tailists, until now.
(Side note: im combining tailists and “reactionary socialists” here, even though I can acknowledge they are different things. Reactionary socialists is my own term that generally doesn’t seek evolution from the soviet days or from other AES projects and just lazily says “let’s do what they did.” I.e, the soviet union was homophobic so we should be homophobic)
I have to be honest, i don’t really follow your logic here. While I do agree that the groups you mentioned are tailist and reactionary, or at least have tailist and reactionary elements, they are still less tailist than the DSA. Because at least they are attempting to constitute an independent political force separate from the bourgeois liberal establishment. The DSA strategy here was the most tailist of all, and their justification for the strategy the most defeatist.
The Democrat victories did not show that principled socialist parties are able to win (though i of course believe that in the long run they can and must, whether that’s through electoralism is another discussion…) but that self-proclaimed socialists, in order to win in the current political environment and the present liberal bourgeois system, have to debase themselves and sell themselves out to one of the two bourgeois parties.
The DSA did not run independent socialist candidates, instead they completely tailed the liberals by running as Democrats with the justification that they could not win as third party candidates. You had self-proclaimed socialists campaign and vote for liberal Zionists and avowed anti-socialists just because they were Democrats. It doesn’t matter what you say, it matters what you do, and what many (not all, to their credit, some did vote PSL) US socialists did when push came to shove was vote Democrat. A total surrender to the establishment in all but rhetoric.
Even Bernie, who is a social chauvinist and liberal Zionist, for all his many flaws at least is still nominally an independent. Because once you surrender to the Democratic (or Republican, but luckily there are no self-proclaimed socialists yet who claim they have to run as Republican for tactical reasons) party machinery, they own you. If the “Democratic Socialist” in Florida was not able to win without the financial backing of the Democratic party then she would never have been able to play a role as a real socialist even if she won, because that victory would have been beholden to the party apparatus and its donors rather than to a mass movement of the working class.
Someone who wins by proclaiming socialist ideas but does so within the prison-like confines of an imperialist party completely hostile to the working class, once they get into a position of power which is granted to them and maintained by a party machinery which is implacably hostile to socialism, will inevitably have to “go along to get along”. And worse, they use their socialist legitimacy and the trust they earn through espousing socialist ideas to lead workers who are becoming more and more class conscious astray and lead them back into the swamp and diffuse the revolutionary energy back into a system designed to absorb and dissipate it.
We have seen time and time again what the real result is, and how these elected so-called socialists, make compromise after compromise and betray their base in order to not be ostracized by the party. How AOCIA and her like viciously demonize the People’s Democracies and AES states around the world, how they put a veneer of progressive legitimacy on the most vile imperialist propaganda about the Islamic Republic of Iran or about the Palestinian Resistance.
Has a single one of these supposed champions of socialism and anti-fascism stood up and demanded the release of the criminally abducted President of Venezuela?! Has any one of them said anything about the Nazi torture camps in Ukraine? I have seen right wing libertarian anti-war people mention it but not a single “democratic socialist”. Shameful.
We will see what happens but i predict the same will happen with this new crop of “Democratic Socialists” too. Rather than hold their ground they will vote in their role as representatives for whoever and whatever the party leadership tells them to in order not to rock the boat, because their real role is to be pressure release valves and to placate the masses with progressive rhetoric while the bourgeois uniparty goes on doing what it has always done.
They will betray the anti-Zionist movement at a time when anti-Zionist sentiment is overwhelmingly popular across the West, and they will betray the anti-war movement at a time when the working class is in no mood to continue to bleed, physically and economically, for these imperialist wars. They will redouble support to the Nazi regime in Ukraine and call it a “just war” while narratively preparing the ground for war with China.
I can imagine of nothing more tailist to the liberal warmongering consensus than parroting anti-Russia, anti-China imperialist propaganda, yet i can guarantee you that is what most if not all of these DSA electeds will end up doing. Because to fulfill their promises of bringing back and expanding social welfare and social safety nets, in a time when the rate of profit throughout the western capitalist system is in precipitous decline and the entire system is in deep crisis, the only way is to desperately try to keep the plunder of the global south going. Social democracy in the imperial core only works through imperialist plunder.
It is the epitome of American arrogance to think that the same strategy of entryism and participation in bourgeois parliamentarianism which for a century has failed in Europe and has led to the betrayal by the SPD, the betrayal by Labor, the betrayal by Die Linke, and on and on, that this will now magically work in the US even though it has never worked before. Why? Because US socdems (which is what Democratic Socialists are) are special and exceptional and immune to being absorbed by the system as everyone else who tried this was?
That wasn’t my point. My point was that, in the aggregate, people will push past ingrained social conservatism [and other beliefs] if they think someone will support their material conditions or if they’ve become disillusioned with the system.
I brought up the demsoc in Florida because Florida is the last place you’d really expect a demsoc to run, considering its full of Gusanos and retire-ees.
Obviously voting doesn’t translate to a revolutionary vanguard. But what im saying is that the start, the actual conversion to socialist beliefs, can happen if its impossible to deny. And really once the economic reality hits, the vanguard isnt too far behind.
Sure. But that is what Marxists have been saying all along. That people are driven by material conditions and that as socialists we have to offer a credible path toward systemic change which can improve those material conditions in order to gain the support of the masses. But it’s not about a conversion to socialist beliefs. Only very few are going to be convinced by intellectual arguments. For most people, it’s not the beliefs that come first, it’s the option for a real alternative, a political movement that can put forward a credible radical break with a status quo that has not been working for most people. Then the belief builds slowly over time seeing that the socialist path offers that alternative.
The problem is that anyone who runs as part of the Democratic party is fundamentally a fake alternative. It may be different in rhetoric but in practice it will result in more of the same due to the internal dynamics of the party and the intrinsically corrupting nature of the system. Which will lead to the oposite of a rise in socialist consciousness. It will lead to a premature rejection of socialist ideas if those ideas become associated with the same failed bourgeois liberal political forces that have never worked for the working class and never will.
That is the fastest way to discredit socialism – by showing that nothing fundamental will change by electing self-proclaimed socialists who go just on to become part of the bourgeois machinery. The more that the American left wastes time and mass energy deluding itself that it can change the Democratic swamp from the inside, the less prepared they will be for when the revolutionary conditions come that will determine if an organized socialist movement takes over when the bourgeois order collapses or a fascist one.
You don’t have to start with an already formed vanguard, but you do have to start forming the vanguard. And you don’t do that by funneling the masses into a bourgeois party, you do it by drawing a clear distinguishing line between the socialists and the old parties. Otherwise you will just be subsumed by the swamp.
“We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation.”
– V. I. Lenin
Where did I say exactly that said the democratic party was a good thing or that socialists should defend it or run in it?
Fair point. Nowhere, i guess. Perhaps i was reading more into what you wrote than what you were actually implying. In that case we agree and i was just preaching to the choir. Now i feel a bit silly.
Its alright. I know im not always clear with what I write. What your wrote was fine, just too the wrong person, so no need to feel silly. Thanks for being civil though, sorry if I came off as combative in my last response myself
Thanks for being so understanding. I’ve been in a strange mood these last few days seeing US comrades celebrate the Democrat victories, knowing that this will almost certainly end with their hopes dashed and a lot more demoralization than if they never put their trust in this strategy in the first place… I suppose that is a painful learning experience that they will just have to go through, as we did in Europe.
finished book of the new sun quartet
History doesn’t repeat
I just got in a major depressive episode. Fuck me.
“You should go for a walk. Exercise and fresh air will help.” is what my dad would say and I would want to hurt him not because he is wrong but because I am depressed and don’t want to go for a walk.
Its just brain chemistry being a dick. You’ll come out of it sometime… maybe. Probably. Hang in there comrade.
I recommend taking a nap. Helped me with my most recent episode.
The brain betraying itself sucks but you are gonna make it, comrade.
The seat of the figurehead of the White Empire is in a building called White House.
Bravo, Kojima
genuine question for those who deal with intrusive thoughts:
i used to get really really bad episodes where i had intrusive thoughts or undesirable thoughts and then hate myself/be angry and sad and spiral rest of day about myself for having them.
and then one day i think i saw a post explaining how many of these undesirable thoughts in the first place are tests by your brain and you not acting on them itself is a success that proves you will not do these things. and then also criticisms about just sort of idealist views about sin and ‘evil thoughts’ when it’s not really a fair thing to think about since any of your ‘good’ isn’t in your brain it’s ultimately your action + other things about really finally thinking of your brain as just an organ rather than spirit or Soul something fictional like that.
and i hate to be like someone saying there’s one easy trick but it really drastically dramatically changed my mental health. has anyone else found a sort of shift in the way they think about their thoughts to be super alleviating? is it harder to get in the habit of for others? does it not change much?
I am still working on it in my own way helped by some medication for my ADHD. It is still a struggle to keep my thoughts in order and sometimes, I relapse into some bad habits.
I do have to mitigate a few other stressful things (like doomscrolling) and constantly keep trying to build the habit of working through those intrusive thoughts, give myself some time to sort it out. It’s still up in the air if I will truly get into that habit for the better but I do think it is working for me…
i believe in it working for you as well. you are steadily improving and in any case nothing will ever make that mean less, even if you have temporary regression in the future. me saying that doesnt really add much but . I believe in you
From Brazil in the heart of Rio de Janeiro
The place is real in case someone thinks I used AI -> https://www.instagram.com/p/DfDToROhggl/
Beautiful. ❤️
It really is! After giving it a look, the place even have live debates, music and education. That’s very nice.
That’s really cool!
There is so much mindless doomerism going on lately. People think Trump is going to end the world for no reason any day now.
Trump is mainly gonna end trans people and the us empire
i like how they pinned it all on him even though we also can see depending on the day his advanced dementia
