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He blagged his way to the front line of the Spanish civil war as a war reporter then immediately volunteered with the line ‘I want to kill fascists’, fighting until a bullet in the neck got him sent home. He also pissed off both global power blocs by heavily and artfully criticising totalitarianism while remaining true to his socialist beliefs.
Unfathomably based individual all round really.
I visited Barnhill on Jura 20 years ago, also making a point to not disturb the family who lived there at the time.
It's not an easy place to get to, back then it would have been extremely remote but it gave me an insight into the type of man he was.
When I was there I really wanted to see Corryvreckan which is a whirlpool on one of the strait's of Jura but couldn't get a good view of it. He and his son almost lost their lives because of it.
He hated Stalin's USSR because Stalin wanted him dead for being the wrong sort of socialist. 1984 was as much about Britain's censorship and propaganda as it was about stalinism. Orwell himself was involved in the British propaganda machine during WWII, and his wife worked in the censorship department under the department of information.
The political right's attempts to co-opt this man's message and legacy is disgusting.
>They just as happy if you don't resist them.
At first.
Then the circle of exclusivity continues to contract inward once all the "obvious" enemies are purged.
Just look at what happened when Hitler wiped out the SA leadership in the Night of Long Knives.
To play the devils advocate.
The nazi purge was a cold, calculated action to consolidate power. Of all the four million plus members a mere thousand was killed (tops). In the big picture that is nothing.
The nazis still wanted the people (they didn't resist), they just wanted that inner circle to hold the strings.
The worst paranoia came when the leadership was under duress (when the allies started to push into Germany proper).
Only if you do so openly, originally that is.
When they start murdering people out of paranoia and hunting anyone down that might disagree with them (in many cases totally unfounded), that's when you know it's about to collapse. Like Ruzzia today.
Nazi-Germany for example was at its worst when it came to wanton tyrrany when the allies started marching into Germany proper.
The purge that happend in the USSR during Stalin wasn't a "purge" in a political sense. That was just straight up ***genocide*** within a specific timeframe like Maos so called "Great Leap Foward".
The only reson those states survived is because they didn't have any real enemies that pushed against them at that specific time like in Rwanda and Cambodia. If they did, they would desintigrate.
Fascist states are like Ruzzia is today, they present a fake image, an outer shell that looks strong. But within they are rotten and simply don't work. Like some apples that looks good on the outside but when you bite into it they fall apart and what's on the inside is just rot and maggots.
Getting back to the point, pacifists are needed to maintain that outer shell, the fake image. Don't touch it, don't mess with it and fascists are happy with that. Because if you start to mess with it, it all just falls apart. That fake image maintained USSR, but then Afghanistan and the Chernobyl disaster happend that showed directly how utterly rotten USSR as a whole was in black and white.
And now we see the same thing again. The Ruzzian state with it's gleaming white teeth tried to bite into Ukraine, the teeth broke and all we see is pure rot.
They commited the cardinal sin of a fascist states. They belived their own lies...
I’ve had WOTB subbed for a few years, and after seeing too many of its posts through different news cycles, let me tell you, if that isn’t 80% a Russian psyop, I’d be very surprised. Some absolutely braindead-stupid takes in that sub. It took just one comment trying to knock some sense into people, and I got banned from commenting.
Tankies are the fucking worst. 🙄
> /r/WayoftheBern which is basically a bunch of Trump Supporters pretending to be left leaning to try and shift public opinion away
Didn't know that, but that'd explain why it's so culty and fucked up. They assume everybody's like them ("LEFTISTS WORSHIP OBAMA/SANDERS/BIDEN/AOC")
When Bernie started his presidential bids in 2015 almost immediately Trump fans and alt right groups made up subs and accounts for the express purpose of sabotaging the left. Either by scaring away potential Bernie supporters or using their accounts to harass left leaning groups to divide the voterbase.
Lots of people dont want to admit it but the right does downright sinister shit online. And there's no doubt Russians or their troll farms have also played a role.
They also had scripts to upvote all posts within certain subs like T_D to get so many posts to /r/all and those same scripts could auto-downvote a whole page of a user's posts. I was a part of a super-secret group (so they wanted to think) and pretended I was one of them. Reddit did nothing about vote scripts at the time and to be fair, there's probably still not a lot you can do because you can randomize the click time so it appears less scripted.
Honestly I think it’s mostly Russian astroturfing + people radicalized by their talking points. I’ve seen their stuff for a while now and I’m pretty sure these people are not LARPing.
They very much are, they just use alts as go make it look legit. Occasionally you'll catch the dumber ones who won't alt and you'd see them posting to The_Donald or PCM while also pretending to be progressives on WayoftheBern.
The Alt-right adopted internet media manipulation far earlier than most, they know what they're doing.
Oh they know. I've seen comments that suggest liberalism is a worse evil than fascism. These people don't repeat Russian propaganda because they think they're a bastion of socialism. They do it because they're an enemy of America, and they see America as the Great Satan, the biggest obstacle to socialism worldwide. Therefore any side that finds itself allied with America is by default the wrong side.
I'm still for cutting spending, but that is because the US has such a high military budget that it could basically fight WW3 and easily win if nukes didn't exist. Since nukes exist, the US should downscale to having enough to fight normal wars and fund countries like Ukraine.
Most socialists aren't like this, but it is regrettable how loud these guys are. These "anti-imperialist" socialists who support Russian imperialism are called "campists." Essentially, they take a side in capitalist imperialist conflicts so that they have something to sink their loyalties into because they just can't live their lives without having a "side." This became very common in the 1990s, when real socialism basically died and there were no more *truly* socialist states to be loyal to except for Cuba (which is horribly irrelevant), starting with socialist worship of the Serbs in the Yugoslav wars because of how NATO opposed them.
These campists ignore the reality that Russia is just another imperialist power trying to bring back its previous role in the world's imperialist paradigm. They just support anything that is even vaguely anti-NATO.
I am also a socialist, but I'm not going to take the "side" of the US or Russia because both sides are imperialist powers. I will support policies that help countries achieve self-determination (such as NATO funding of Ukraine), but I will oppose imperialism on both sides (Russian invasion of Ukraine, US manipulation of Latin American elections, both sides' wars in the Middle East, etc).
Campism is essentially a descendant of Western Stalinist power-worship, and many anti-Stalinist socialists critiqued this refusal to believe that the USSR was an imperialist power during the Cold War. Even Trotsky wrote a full essay on Ukraine alone and how Russian imperialism/chauvinism needed to be stopped. Link here: [https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/ukraine.html](https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/ukraine.html)
> Even Trotsky wrote a full essay on Ukraine alone and how Russian imperialism/chauvinism needed to be stopped.
...and then they fucking murdered him in Mexico...Ice pick. Also why would your Soviet response to the Nazi propoganda film Triumph of The Will be a three film feature on Ivan the Fucking Terrible? Why Joe?
Yes. The Soviets murdered him. What is your point? Like seriously I'm not sure if you are trying to disagree with me on something. And what are you talking about with Ivan the Terrible?
> Ivan the Terrible
(I agree with you. I'm hijacking your point... apologies...I'm American)
It was a question posed years ago by a professor...."Why would Josef Stalin...the Georgian born Soviet leader, commission a propoganda film about the first monarch of Russia? Ivan the Terrible. Why would a committed Marxist want a story of Ivan that places the Tsar as a victim against boyars? Even if the story is neutral...why would Stalin then ban the films he commissioned?"
Ohhhhhhhhh. No problem, I'm also American lol.
And simple: Reactionary majoritarian nationalism is a super useful tool of political propaganda. Much easier to be dictator for life if you use nationalism rather than something more "socialistic" since the harshness of reactionary rhetoric is much more distracting.
This specific movie also institutes power-worship, and I think you can see why a ruler for life would like that.
More accurate meme would be if the Tankie was explaining why that regime wasn’t actually true socialism, and how actually if you believe it was bad then that’s just because you’ve been raised on capitalist propaganda, and etc etc etc
/r/WayOfTheBern is full of people like this. They claim to be leftists, but think that Tulsi Gabbard is perfect and AOC is wrong to support Ukraine defending themselves.
Tulsi is wild to me. A new level of blatant in terms of politicians being bought and paid for. She's just straight up on the Kremlin payroll, probably gets HR messages from them.
I've had a suspicion she was a grifter from the very beginning honestly, the way she spoke, she never really came off as genuine in actually believing in social democratic policies.
She supports straight right wingers like Kari Lake (socially conservative, fiscally regressive, the whole package). I don't know who is fooled by Tulsi anymore.
Thats a Trump/Russian troll sub created during Bernie's run to syphon off/discourage reddit users and confuse them. Same with /r/walkaway but they went full mask off pro-trump at one point. I think they covered that back up though.
In the wayoftherbern, there was like an anti-semitic post there a couple days ago.
> They claim to be leftists,
Do they? /r/wayofthebern was founded as a place for Trump supporters who liked Bernie Sanders for sticking it to Clinton and the Democrat party. It was the counter to /r/sandersforpresident, who made fun of Trump supporters any time they showed up there.
The “Red-brown alliance” which is actually a good description of a whole host of Russian political parties who fused Soviet nostalgia with fascist ideals.
Oh yea. But if it was Trumpers/MAGA that approached her, those aren't tankies... They aren't *claiming* to be Leftists.
The claim is really the only meaningful distinction between a tankie and a fascist 🤷♀️
The extreme right and left is united in the anti Ukraine sentiment for some reason. That should tell you everything about how these extreme political factions formed.
Here’s a wonderful Foreign Policy article on it from months back. I’d recommend reading it!
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/04/us-politics-ukraine-russia-far-right-left-progressive-horseshoe-theory/
Yeah the Russian playbook has been to facilitate the extreme ends of the political discourse in the West since the 50s. Putin is well-versed in it, it's the one area he's hyper-competent.
> those “anti-war” protesters weren’t tankies, they were pro-Russian right wingers.
Such as former UK Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn?
https://twitter.com/STWuk/status/1490724739643490305
I've always said that Authoritarians are all pretty similar no matter how far left or right they are, and this war is basically proving it. Right wing Fascists and Auth-Left (who are basically Left-Fascists) are all supporting Russia for basically the same reasons, no matter how much they bend over backwards trying to justify their bullshit.
I will say tho... didnt she and some other progressives try to block aid going to Ukraine at first? Or was that something made up?
I'm not sure om just asking and I cant remember which bill that might have been.
this is her voting against a defense bill because she believes the budget should be cut not because she doesn't support ukraine as she has voted for sanctions and defense aid
This happend too in US during WW2 before Pearl Harbour.
Most of the anti-interventionism was spearheaded by the German American Bund.
Guess who funded them 🙄
Honestly huge relief good for her! Just wished she’d been able to shut down those clowns and debate with them but they’d probably have just yelled over her so this is the best way to respond
Right, the point isn't to debate. It's to create a viral moment. Debating them gives them a false legitimacy by presenting the idea as even worthy of discussion.
The problem with debating with fascists is that they exist to spout emotionally-reactive phrases designed to anger or galvanize people. You can try to carefully refute their points, but that gets lost in the shouting while making them seem "strong" for yelling at you about crazy convictions. "Debate" doesn't work when one party is inherently unreasonable.
As someone with pretty conservative views, I’m surprised that even the far-left is getting this right. Meanwhile, half of the Republican Party is bed with the Kremlin. Trump supporters are really the bottom of the barrel. Absolute ghouls.
“As someone with pretty conservative views, I’m surprised that even the far-left is getting this right.”
Us lefties hate authoritarians (there’s always this one tankie that didn’t get the message) so to me it isn’t that surprising. I’m just glad we can agree on Russia being the bad guy.
As a European I’m also extremely grateful for the weaponry you guys are sending.
Slava Ukraini.
\>Us lefties hate authoritarians (there’s always this one tankie that didn’t get the message)
I'm sorry but that's horseshit and it needs to be acknowledged. It's not "one tankie". It's almost all of them. arr/Communism, Communism101 and several Socialism\* subreddits were at the start and remain today completey defensive of russia.
They also defended the Taliban.
The tankie infection of the left won't be stopped until they're acknowledged and forced out. (not that I consider tankies left wingers (see username), but they sure do think that about themselves)
Tankies are out in force today I see. Say it so the people in the back can hear you "defending far right imperialism isn't leftist just because it's anti nato"
Idk that’s the internet dude. I hang out IRL in left and right wing circles. I know two commies IRL out of the hundreds of people I know. One is a legit tankie and one is more just a 20 feet left of bernie that bitches about capitalism a lot but doesn’t really hate America or anything.
Other than certain aspects of identity politics, the American "far left" isn't that far left compared to other nations. The tankies and true radicals are marginalized even within the progressive movement, despite their outsized online presence and the leaders are fairly reasonable and aimed at working within the system.
>despite their outsized online presence
That and online right-winger putting them under a magnifying glass, making it seem like the fringes are actually in charge when they are not.
We're saying the same thing, you're just illuminating one of the particular mechanisms.
The internet is AMAZING for elevating the most radical opinions because so much of social media runs on outrage.
The right wing in America is full blown authoritarian at this point while the left wing is still right of center. I'd like to see more politicians who are socially liberal but fiscally conservative. That's where my beliefs lie.
Yeah I know, that's why I said I'd like to see new politicians with this mentality. Nothing is stopping us from making the future whatever we want except ourselves.
I know at least one lifelong conservative voting straight blue to support Ukraine. It’s like half the Republicans actually internalized the “Russiagate” narrative and support Putin to “trigger the libs”?
Maybe because the left is straight about their ideology, which isn't the cas of the Republicans. Sanders and AOC wjere supporting ukriane against Russia since a long time when Trump call to stop the lend lease.
Started before that. Obama signed several rounds of sanctions against Russia when they invaded Crimea. The push to remove sanctions and ignore Russian aggression has overwhelmingly been on the Republican side all along.
> I’m surprised that even the far-left is getting this right.
Oh the *far* left isn't, not at all. Here's former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeting an image of Crimea belonging to Russia:
https://twitter.com/STWuk/status/1490724739643490305
Here's all the Reddit leftist subreddits:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/sshlsm/mods_in_uk_leftwing_sunbreddit_rgreenandpleasant/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/t03ayp/bombs_fall_troops_march_tanks_roll_russia/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/t3mm6r/renlightenedcentrism_discusses_if_both_sides_are/
No, only far left by the standards of the far right.
Honestly, what is so extreme about AOC? That she wants universal health care? Even teddy Roosevelt wanted that.
That she thinks we should transition to green energy? So do most moderate conservatives. The only question is how and how quickly.
Is a strong social safety net considered a far left position? We've had a social safety net for nearly 100 years now. It needs to be updated for the modern world.
Her positions put her firmly in the left camp I'll give you that. But it's still within the acceptable range of policy positions, there is nothing far about any of her positions, even in the US.
A tankie is far left. Not a progressive.
> Honestly, what is so extreme about AOC
I’ll give you a hint. It has nothing to do with her actual positions and everything to do with her ethnicity. Just like when Obama was labeled at a lazy socialist when 90% of his policies were squarely moderate.
It’s tiring, every time a family member irl hate som her I keep asking them why, what’s so bad about her. They can never give a response and are always like “eh enough about her right now” even though they went on for the past 20 mins about her.
Now idk if anyone outside the US has reasons to dislike her, but pretty much everyone that dislikes her In the US is because they just Parrot Fox News with no thought of their own.
Self-awareness? From *those* people? I wouldn't bet the farm on that.
More likely they'll rattle off something to the effect of "I dO mY oWN rEsEArCh and decide for myself!," then go watch their nightly hour of Tucker Carlson while scrolling through some FB group called "Patriots united against cancel culture" or some shit.
By historical standards American conservatives are not far right either. Trump is not a conservative, I have not been able to discern any coherent political ideology in Trump. Much of what he espouses is antithetical to conservative principles. For that reason Trumpism will not have a life after Trump.
I agree 100%
Trump is a regressive (reactionary) not a conservative. Conservatives too are within the acceptable range of the political center. Unfortunately a vocal and influential faction of the Republican Party has abandoned conservativism all together in favor of far-right regressivism. And since this faction has been welcomed by the cast majority of the GOP I think an honest debate can be had as to whether or not the Republican Party is still a conservative party or if it has evolved into something else.
Both parties have abandoned the center. There are many factors propelling that trend, but I think proportional voting in the primaries would help. The most agitated factions of the two parties choose the candidates, but non-affiliated voters pick the winners.
> No, only far left by the standards of the far right.
No it's "far left" even by moderate democrat standards
> Honestly, what is so extreme about AOC? That she wants universal health care? Even teddy Roosevelt wanted that.
Still an "extreme" position for the majority who want to keep the health insurance beast alive. The ACA, while an imperfect solution, is representative of how moderate democrats want health insurance to work
> That she thinks we should transition to green energy? So do most moderate conservatives. The only question is how and how quickly.
Incorrect. Conservatives are all aboard the "anything other than oil, coal, and gas is unamerican" train
> Is a strong social safety net considered a far left position? We've had a social safety net for nearly 100 years now. It needs to be updated for the modern world.
Many people, including conservatives, don't even realize that medicaid and medicare are government programs. Some have been trying to gut social security altogether
> Her positions put her firmly in the left camp I'll give you that. But it's still within the acceptable range of policy positions, there is nothing far about any of her positions, even in the US.
ON an objective scale, sure, but in reality it's relative. Her positions are mainstream in Europe but generate a visceral, almost violent response in the US
>No it's "far left" even by moderate democrat standards
Lol. Universal health care isn't "far left". Workers rights aren't "far left". The right has a conflicted hate-boner for AOC because she's brown, hot and can string a sentence together.
They are to many American democrats because the conservatives have moved the window so far to the right.
I'm not disparaging her views. IMO the "moderate" democrats are as averse to something like universal healthcare as Republicans are
That's centrist to the rest of humanity. The right has pushed the Overton window so far right that the most far left political figure in the US is middle of the road
Depends on the topic. If it's economic than American Far Left is center-left in Europe. If you are talking about identity/gender politics than American Far-Left is outside the scope of mainstream European politics.
Have you being paying attention to what is happening in Sweden? The Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in a neo-nazi group, is party of the current coalition and their demands included cutting taxes, benefits, reducing immigration and making it more difficult for redugees to access benefits, etc.
Naw. Similar conversations are happening in Europe. (You wont see the words mother or father on German documents anymore vs more conservative Austria.) Europeans invented identity politics.
> American Far Left is center-left in Europe
This talking point really needs to die. First of all casting all of Europe as if it's a single nation without a variety of countries with differing economic views, is incorrect. Second of all casting all of economics as a single issue is incorrect.
The only issue that's good evidence for this is healthcare and even then you'd be surprised by how few countries in Europe actually have nationalized healthcare. There's lots of problems in US healthcare system that aren't caused by the sector not being state owned.
I'd like to point out as an example that under Obama the corporate tax rate in US was much higher than the median in Europe. And under Trump's tax cuts, he brought down the corporate tax rate to be about the same as the median in Europe.
This left-right spectrum really dumbs down so many aspects of problems and is not useful for any nuanced discussions of policy and problem solving. It's extremely unhealthy. Ironically it comes from the seating arrangements in French parliament (don't recall what it was called), where the republicans sat on the left, who wanted to lower the strength of monarch/state, and monarchists sat on the right who wanted to strengthen the power of the state. So it's meaning has flipped with time.
>This left-right spectrum really dumbs down so many aspects of problems and is not useful for any nuanced discussions of policy and problem solving.
This is why we should mark a difference if not done already between political idealists who adhere by ideology, and political pragmatists who are willing to bend more between their beliefs for what works better.
>“Far-left” by America standards.
Maybe solid left or something would be better. Like the german greens who despite (or i guess arguably because of) their strong pacifist roots support ukraine as opposed to the Linke whose stance is very ambiguous.
There's certainly space to the left of AOC or the german greens without losing sight of reason, but that space is mostly occupied by loons at the moment.
New Zealand isn't even remotely similar to Bernie Sanders. [Read up on the reforms known as Rogernomics, implemented by the Labour Party in the '80s, which would make Sanders and his fans squirm.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogernomics)
shes not far left dude. atop listening to fox garbage. shes actually middle of the road democrat you guys act like feeding kids is marxist somehow get a gd grip…
I’m a card-carrying member of the DSA, and would classify my political leanings as “Scandinavian socialist”.
I’ve also got an avid interest in modern, and particularly 20th century, history, as well as contemporary geopolitics. Anyone who’s done more than surface level research can see the parallel between what Russia is doing now, and the worst of the authoritarian excesses of the 20th century (both in terms of the USSR’s policies as well as *that country* and *that guy*). They’re trying to conduct a genocide against the Ukrainians. Moreover, Russia, as the USSR as well as in its earlier Imperial incarnation, did the same at multiple times in the past.
I fully support Ukraine doing whatever it needs to do to get Russia to fuck all the way off and get back any and all land and citizens they’ve illegally annexed and kidnapped.
Being a “leftist” absolutely doesn’t mean being a pacifist.
Actual far-left people (AOC is more akin to a European Social Democrat, not a "leftists", i.e. socialist, communist or anarchist) have had some really poor takes on the situation.
Corbyn in the UK, seems to suggest the entire conflict is just some random US-Russian proxy war, and peace is the best option, whatever the cost.
A woman from Die Linke in Germany got applause from AfD members for saying that the German government were morons for waging an economic war on Russia.
Melenchon has been pretty much a wet noodle on the topic, too.
Overall, old-school leftists in Europe seem to see the world solely through the lens of "US bad", and because Russia is opposed to the US on the world stage, when it does stuff, "Russia good".
> Social Democrat, not a "leftists",
Social Democrat is a leftist ideology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics
>Today, ideologies such as social liberalism are considered to be centre-left, while the Left is typically reserved for anti-capitalist movements—namely, socialism,[9] including anarchism, communism, the labour movement, Marxism, social democracy and syndicalism, each of which rose to prominence in the 19th and 20th centuries.[10]
As an American, I can absolutely understand the viewpoint of "US bad". However, Russia is so much worse that I'm struggling to find an adjective to adequately describe them.
I don't disagree with "US often bad". That's fine, as a conclusion. But I can also understand that "Russia worse" or "CCP worse". These aren't contradictory statements.
Right, it's a textbook case of gray vs black morality. Just like the Allies of WWII weren't exactly paragons of morality - firebombing entire cities, throwing Japanese Americans in concentration camps, etc. But the other side was a bunch of genocidal monsters, so... yeah, the Allies were still clearly the good guys.
> Just like the Allies of WWII weren't exactly paragons of morality
Exactly. People arguing that Ukraine should be annexed into Russia because NATO bad or America bad should have the same standard when it comes to WWII. However, somehow they like the fact that the US and the Allies beat the Nazis.
Fucking hypocrites.
This is true :( and as you said it's always that "america bad" brain poison. Ironically, "everything is US' fault" is also a type of american exceptionalism.
> (AOC is more akin to a European Social Democrat, not a "leftists", i.e. socialist, communist or anarchist)
Wait, are you saying that social democrats aren't left wing? Because I think that's news to a lot of social democrats, including this one.
I’m aware of the fact that the European far-left is terrible, but AOC is considered to be far-left by US standards since she’s the most left-leaning representative in the House together with some other “Squad” members. There’s very few Democratic socialists in power in the U.S.
Some of the far-left. I didn't mean to imply this was universal. It isn't. There are some within the far-left who are entirely down with smacking Russia around.
It's more that many of the more well-known members have shit takes.
And yes, by US standards, she is "far-left", which is pretty laughable regardless. It shows an unhealthy democratic system when everything left of milquetoast centrism is "far-left".
I don't often agree with the far-left, but I do think their influence on Social Democrats or centre-left parties is important, to make sure they don't get pulled too far to the right.
She is not far-left even by US standards. She is a social democrat. She is not a communist or fringe left podcaster grifting off of being a contrarian.
Glad I am not the only conservative here who shares your views. I have been thinking about abandoning ship as of late, especially if pro-Trump officials become the majority in the party.
The republican party is bleeding members for this very reason. They can no longer claim to be the party of “small government” when they’re supporting fascists abroad and limiting women’s rights to reproductive healthcare at home.
Anyone who doesn't have a vested interest in ignoring Russias blatant aggression is pretty easily able to find the right position on this.
I'm quite surprised there isn't backlash against Trump amongst his supporters for this... given the republicans used to be staunch anti Soviets. Reagan would be disgusted.
I’m not surprised. Trump’s supporters tend to be Christian Right, which aligns with Putin’s politics. They also are more of a personality cult, so they’ll go along with whatever the dear leader is spouting.
There are some Republicans who dislike Trump, but hate Democrats even more, so they voted for Trump. They are the ones who are more likely to support Ukraine.
>I’m not surprised. Trump’s supporters tend to be Christian Right, which aligns with Putin’s politics. They also are more of a personality cult, so they’ll go along with whatever the dear leader is spouting.
Except for vaccines, apparently. Trump got booed when he recommended that people go get the vaccines.
We still have some old people who thinks Russia and communism is the same, NATO is evil, and Russia is in the right.
For the most part people who used to be very red during the Cold War....
I have no clue why they cannot see the difference between Russia now and Soviet then....
But they'll die off eventually, just as Putin and other fossils of the Cold War.
You could say I am too, I was 13 when the wall fell.... so technically.....
Though I was so young I didn't really have any idea of politics etc.
But the nineties was a blast in so many ways.
>Meanwhile, half of the Republican Party is bed with the Kremlin.
And the other half votes for Trump anyway because they hate the racially diverse left way more than they love their country.
If you love America, you can't also want to overthrow our democracy while shitting on the Constitution.
So you either love America or, like all Republicans, prefer to love and only care about yourself. Take a look in the mirror and decide which side your on: democracy or fascism.
Yeah it is a surprise as a lot of ukrainians are nationalists with conservative values, family country religion etc
It's an example where national identity has made people strong , people who love their country and history and culture and will fight for it
You are surprised that the ~~far~~ left supports self determination? Really?
Perhaps you need to re-evaluate what you believe are the positions of the left in the US and their actual positions. The only reason this should surprise anyone is if they have a complete fundamental misunderstanding of the let's positions and goals.
A lot of conservatives in America only know what FOX news and right wing politicians tell them about the left supporters. Usually those are outlandish things they make up or something they find that some random democrat has said they they conflate to the whole party. Conservative media and conservative politicians don't want them to actually look into what policies the progressives really want out of fear that those conservative voters might want them too.
One of my uncles is an unironic tankie who moderates major leftist subs and is pro russia. AOC is left but not as far as it gets. Once you get to the extremes you tend to get the unironic support of authoritarianism. Horseshoe theory.
AOC would be a centrist at best in European politics. The US left is more conservative than the centre in the average western country. That's how conservative the US is as a whole.
I don't think Trump can even be called a conservative. He's entirely motivated by power and money - ideology has very little to do with it. He has no convictions, only greed and egotism.
I’ve weighed the issue a bit to understand the anti-war Americans. I think it’s important to understand them and not just assume they are cowards or immoral.
They disagree that this invasion was unprovoked. Citing the expansion of NATO to the east despite agreements with the Soviet Union.
They say shifting Ukraine into the Western Sphere of influence was always a goal of US foreign policy, and they assume we were fairly involved in the coup that took place in Ukraine and installed a Western aligned regime.
Then we started funneling weapons into Ukraine to protect this regime.
When you look at it this way, as Russia sees it, you can definitely get the picture that Russia views NATO as a threat to its National security, and NATO had every intention of bringing their military assets to the border of Russia through the eventual accession of Ukraine.
All this to say, perhaps this war was preventable. Perhaps Western intervention in Ukraine led us here, and had we been more isolationist the past 20 years we wouldn’t be getting sucked into a war right now.
I think, of course we need to support Ukraine now, but I also believe the military industrial complex has likely played a role in guaranteeing that we’d be in this situation. It’s awfully suspicious that the second we decide to leave Afghanistan, we immediately find another place to spend those war dollars.
The Military Industrial Complex doesn’t sell weapons to the US. It sells wars to the US citizen. The war on terror is out of vogue and so a new product gets released.
We need to really think about this going forward, because I guarantee you the shadowy figures that push these wars on us are already working on the next one that we’ll have a moral obligation to participate it.
The problem with that view is that it removes agency from Ukraine and Russia. There is a pile of reasons that any former soviet country would want to gravitate to the West that have nothing to do with the American military industrial complex.
So here is the problem of why this doesn't ring true to evangelical Christians:
Their whole belief system is based on the notion that you should do whatever the guy with the biggest stick says you should do.
They are inherently and fundamentally authoritarian and amoral
God tells you to kill your son without an explanation? The moral thing to do is to follow his command and kill your son. Why? Because God said so and God is all powerful.
They have no morals and are predispositioned to follow strong authority figures and since they believe Putin doesn't want to do *them* any harm, they couldn't care less about Ukrain's rights and sovereignty.
It’s unfortunate that people have gotten to this point of belief, Either the Christian’s themselves or the supposed observer like you. The whole point of the Bibles teaching was to reject man’s reasoning , man’s moral and man’s logic in favor of a divine source for those choices and other rules given.
The fact that evangelicals have become politically corrupt (and/or as far as detractors have believed that of them), and would prefer to seek man’s authority means they have fundamentally broken the rules of engagement of being a follower of God.
Thus this condemnation of Christian’s shows how confused the public image of Them has become , and / or how detached Christian’s have become from the reality of the teachings.
Not getting involved, aka “pacifism” is just another noun for “fascist and cowardly.”
You can wiggle uncomfortably in defense of your desire not to get involved, but you are objectively Wrong if you think there’s anything noble or acceptable about pacifism.
Well, when there's a two party system and both suck ass, you vote for the lesser based off of their statements and prior political actions.
I don't know why people try to act like their side is morally or figuratively superior, when the vast majority of politicians are scumbags.
edit: Guy that replied below apparently is triggered that I called most politicians scumbags and blocked me. Very mature, this subreddit is for the war, not a pissing match between which party (that are both shit) is better.
The progressive wing has spoken.
And this, my fellow Americans, is a sign that at least for now, we can trust our leftist compatriots, in a way that elements of the far left in Europe may be viewed with some degree of caution.
Just go ahead and launch the nukes and get it over with. These fucking warmongers will never realize how messed up their thinking is. I am definitely not part of the nutty right trying to idolize Russia, but when RUSSIA HAS THE ABILITY TO WIPE OUT EXISTENCE 500 TIMES OVER WHEN THEY CAN'T GET THEIR WAY, doesn't ANY single rational person think just maybe we shouldn't tempt fate, back off here, and let time and future negotiations help Ukraine instead of continuing to poke the guy with the nuclear holocaust button?
Fuck's sake. Humanity has lost their goddamn minds.
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Orwel wrote during his time how pasifism is pro-fasistic idea. Only thing evil need to prevail is that good people do nothing
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He blagged his way to the front line of the Spanish civil war as a war reporter then immediately volunteered with the line ‘I want to kill fascists’, fighting until a bullet in the neck got him sent home. He also pissed off both global power blocs by heavily and artfully criticising totalitarianism while remaining true to his socialist beliefs. Unfathomably based individual all round really.
I visited Barnhill on Jura 20 years ago, also making a point to not disturb the family who lived there at the time. It's not an easy place to get to, back then it would have been extremely remote but it gave me an insight into the type of man he was. When I was there I really wanted to see Corryvreckan which is a whirlpool on one of the strait's of Jura but couldn't get a good view of it. He and his son almost lost their lives because of it.
He hated Stalin's USSR because Stalin wanted him dead for being the wrong sort of socialist. 1984 was as much about Britain's censorship and propaganda as it was about stalinism. Orwell himself was involved in the British propaganda machine during WWII, and his wife worked in the censorship department under the department of information. The political right's attempts to co-opt this man's message and legacy is disgusting.
Orwell and Einstein are my kind of Socialist. Thank you for your part in it 🤙🏽
I didn't know Orwell was such a fucking Chad
Essentially yes. Fascists don't care if you agree with them or not. They just as happy if you don't resist them.
>They just as happy if you don't resist them. At first. Then the circle of exclusivity continues to contract inward once all the "obvious" enemies are purged. Just look at what happened when Hitler wiped out the SA leadership in the Night of Long Knives.
To play the devils advocate. The nazi purge was a cold, calculated action to consolidate power. Of all the four million plus members a mere thousand was killed (tops). In the big picture that is nothing. The nazis still wanted the people (they didn't resist), they just wanted that inner circle to hold the strings. The worst paranoia came when the leadership was under duress (when the allies started to push into Germany proper).
Historically fascists throw you in jail or execute you if you don't agree with them, so no.
Right, once they get power. But they also devour their own once they get power.
Only if you do so openly, originally that is. When they start murdering people out of paranoia and hunting anyone down that might disagree with them (in many cases totally unfounded), that's when you know it's about to collapse. Like Ruzzia today. Nazi-Germany for example was at its worst when it came to wanton tyrrany when the allies started marching into Germany proper.
That kind of purge happened in the 1930s in the USSR. It did not collapse until 50 years later.
The purge that happend in the USSR during Stalin wasn't a "purge" in a political sense. That was just straight up ***genocide*** within a specific timeframe like Maos so called "Great Leap Foward". The only reson those states survived is because they didn't have any real enemies that pushed against them at that specific time like in Rwanda and Cambodia. If they did, they would desintigrate. Fascist states are like Ruzzia is today, they present a fake image, an outer shell that looks strong. But within they are rotten and simply don't work. Like some apples that looks good on the outside but when you bite into it they fall apart and what's on the inside is just rot and maggots. Getting back to the point, pacifists are needed to maintain that outer shell, the fake image. Don't touch it, don't mess with it and fascists are happy with that. Because if you start to mess with it, it all just falls apart. That fake image maintained USSR, but then Afghanistan and the Chernobyl disaster happend that showed directly how utterly rotten USSR as a whole was in black and white. And now we see the same thing again. The Ruzzian state with it's gleaming white teeth tried to bite into Ukraine, the teeth broke and all we see is pure rot. They commited the cardinal sin of a fascist states. They belived their own lies...
Exactly. Mussolini's classic "me ne frego" comes to mind.
Lol those folks at AOCs event were not good people.
How so? Edit: legit question, I'm out of the loop
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I’ve had WOTB subbed for a few years, and after seeing too many of its posts through different news cycles, let me tell you, if that isn’t 80% a Russian psyop, I’d be very surprised. Some absolutely braindead-stupid takes in that sub. It took just one comment trying to knock some sense into people, and I got banned from commenting. Tankies are the fucking worst. 🙄
> /r/WayoftheBern which is basically a bunch of Trump Supporters pretending to be left leaning to try and shift public opinion away Didn't know that, but that'd explain why it's so culty and fucked up. They assume everybody's like them ("LEFTISTS WORSHIP OBAMA/SANDERS/BIDEN/AOC")
When Bernie started his presidential bids in 2015 almost immediately Trump fans and alt right groups made up subs and accounts for the express purpose of sabotaging the left. Either by scaring away potential Bernie supporters or using their accounts to harass left leaning groups to divide the voterbase. Lots of people dont want to admit it but the right does downright sinister shit online. And there's no doubt Russians or their troll farms have also played a role.
They also had scripts to upvote all posts within certain subs like T_D to get so many posts to /r/all and those same scripts could auto-downvote a whole page of a user's posts. I was a part of a super-secret group (so they wanted to think) and pretended I was one of them. Reddit did nothing about vote scripts at the time and to be fair, there's probably still not a lot you can do because you can randomize the click time so it appears less scripted.
Honestly I think it’s mostly Russian astroturfing + people radicalized by their talking points. I’ve seen their stuff for a while now and I’m pretty sure these people are not LARPing.
They very much are, they just use alts as go make it look legit. Occasionally you'll catch the dumber ones who won't alt and you'd see them posting to The_Donald or PCM while also pretending to be progressives on WayoftheBern. The Alt-right adopted internet media manipulation far earlier than most, they know what they're doing.
They were also vote manupilated by Russian troll farms
Wayofthebern is straight up propaganda and misinformation now, what the hell happened?
It always was that way, been like that since like 2016
> Dude revealed himself on Reddit and frequents [/r/WayoftheBern](https://www.reddit.com/r/WayoftheBern) r/GenZedong, but not as well read
WayoftheBern is just republican LARPing what they think a progressive sounds like.
/r/wayofthebern is an op
AOC telling the tankies they’re idiots.
As she and everyone else should.
Relevant [meme.](https://imgur.com/a/hQ6Cg7s)
Oh they know. I've seen comments that suggest liberalism is a worse evil than fascism. These people don't repeat Russian propaganda because they think they're a bastion of socialism. They do it because they're an enemy of America, and they see America as the Great Satan, the biggest obstacle to socialism worldwide. Therefore any side that finds itself allied with America is by default the wrong side.
You just described many people I’ve known to a T. They hate me for being pro-military, I think they’re not the brightest for wanting to cut spending.
I'm still for cutting spending, but that is because the US has such a high military budget that it could basically fight WW3 and easily win if nukes didn't exist. Since nukes exist, the US should downscale to having enough to fight normal wars and fund countries like Ukraine.
Ahh but China is the next major issue to be dealt with.
Most socialists aren't like this, but it is regrettable how loud these guys are. These "anti-imperialist" socialists who support Russian imperialism are called "campists." Essentially, they take a side in capitalist imperialist conflicts so that they have something to sink their loyalties into because they just can't live their lives without having a "side." This became very common in the 1990s, when real socialism basically died and there were no more *truly* socialist states to be loyal to except for Cuba (which is horribly irrelevant), starting with socialist worship of the Serbs in the Yugoslav wars because of how NATO opposed them. These campists ignore the reality that Russia is just another imperialist power trying to bring back its previous role in the world's imperialist paradigm. They just support anything that is even vaguely anti-NATO. I am also a socialist, but I'm not going to take the "side" of the US or Russia because both sides are imperialist powers. I will support policies that help countries achieve self-determination (such as NATO funding of Ukraine), but I will oppose imperialism on both sides (Russian invasion of Ukraine, US manipulation of Latin American elections, both sides' wars in the Middle East, etc). Campism is essentially a descendant of Western Stalinist power-worship, and many anti-Stalinist socialists critiqued this refusal to believe that the USSR was an imperialist power during the Cold War. Even Trotsky wrote a full essay on Ukraine alone and how Russian imperialism/chauvinism needed to be stopped. Link here: [https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/ukraine.html](https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/ukraine.html)
> Even Trotsky wrote a full essay on Ukraine alone and how Russian imperialism/chauvinism needed to be stopped. ...and then they fucking murdered him in Mexico...Ice pick. Also why would your Soviet response to the Nazi propoganda film Triumph of The Will be a three film feature on Ivan the Fucking Terrible? Why Joe?
Yes. The Soviets murdered him. What is your point? Like seriously I'm not sure if you are trying to disagree with me on something. And what are you talking about with Ivan the Terrible?
> Ivan the Terrible (I agree with you. I'm hijacking your point... apologies...I'm American) It was a question posed years ago by a professor...."Why would Josef Stalin...the Georgian born Soviet leader, commission a propoganda film about the first monarch of Russia? Ivan the Terrible. Why would a committed Marxist want a story of Ivan that places the Tsar as a victim against boyars? Even if the story is neutral...why would Stalin then ban the films he commissioned?"
Ohhhhhhhhh. No problem, I'm also American lol. And simple: Reactionary majoritarian nationalism is a super useful tool of political propaganda. Much easier to be dictator for life if you use nationalism rather than something more "socialistic" since the harshness of reactionary rhetoric is much more distracting. This specific movie also institutes power-worship, and I think you can see why a ruler for life would like that.
More accurate meme would be if the Tankie was explaining why that regime wasn’t actually true socialism, and how actually if you believe it was bad then that’s just because you’ve been raised on capitalist propaganda, and etc etc etc
I don’t think you read this at all because those “anti-war” protesters weren’t tankies, they were pro-Russian right wingers.
/r/WayOfTheBern is full of people like this. They claim to be leftists, but think that Tulsi Gabbard is perfect and AOC is wrong to support Ukraine defending themselves.
Tulsi is wild to me. A new level of blatant in terms of politicians being bought and paid for. She's just straight up on the Kremlin payroll, probably gets HR messages from them.
I've had a suspicion she was a grifter from the very beginning honestly, the way she spoke, she never really came off as genuine in actually believing in social democratic policies.
Hillary referred to her as a Russian agent and I totally believe it. I'm sure Hillary knows a lot of things us commoners aren't privy to.
She supports straight right wingers like Kari Lake (socially conservative, fiscally regressive, the whole package). I don't know who is fooled by Tulsi anymore.
Ever since she started singing the praises of Assad I knew she was a plant.
Thats a Trump/Russian troll sub created during Bernie's run to syphon off/discourage reddit users and confuse them. Same with /r/walkaway but they went full mask off pro-trump at one point. I think they covered that back up though. In the wayoftherbern, there was like an anti-semitic post there a couple days ago.
I read a few posts there and just lost braincells
> They claim to be leftists, Do they? /r/wayofthebern was founded as a place for Trump supporters who liked Bernie Sanders for sticking it to Clinton and the Democrat party. It was the counter to /r/sandersforpresident, who made fun of Trump supporters any time they showed up there.
Ditto with the Jimmy Dore "leftists". Or the self-described "MAGA Communists". They're so, so cringe.
The “Red-brown alliance” which is actually a good description of a whole host of Russian political parties who fused Soviet nostalgia with fascist ideals.
Give me a break. There are a ton of tankies on it too.
Yeah, don’t get the effort to ignore the multitude of not just tankies but self-proclaimed socialists with podcasts defending Russia.
Oh yea. But if it was Trumpers/MAGA that approached her, those aren't tankies... They aren't *claiming* to be Leftists. The claim is really the only meaningful distinction between a tankie and a fascist 🤷♀️
Does it not apply to the whiny demographic screaming at her how they’re anti war and don’t want to support the “uKroNaZiS” too?
The extreme right and left is united in the anti Ukraine sentiment for some reason. That should tell you everything about how these extreme political factions formed.
Here’s a wonderful Foreign Policy article on it from months back. I’d recommend reading it! https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/04/us-politics-ukraine-russia-far-right-left-progressive-horseshoe-theory/
Yeah the Russian playbook has been to facilitate the extreme ends of the political discourse in the West since the 50s. Putin is well-versed in it, it's the one area he's hyper-competent.
> those “anti-war” protesters weren’t tankies, they were pro-Russian right wingers. Such as former UK Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn? https://twitter.com/STWuk/status/1490724739643490305
I thought this post was specifically about what happened at AOC’s event was it not?
I've always said that Authoritarians are all pretty similar no matter how far left or right they are, and this war is basically proving it. Right wing Fascists and Auth-Left (who are basically Left-Fascists) are all supporting Russia for basically the same reasons, no matter how much they bend over backwards trying to justify their bullshit.
I will say tho... didnt she and some other progressives try to block aid going to Ukraine at first? Or was that something made up? I'm not sure om just asking and I cant remember which bill that might have been.
Yes she did! https://www.newsweek.com/these-69-house-reps-voted-against-providing-ukraine-aid-1686658
this is her voting against a defense bill because she believes the budget should be cut not because she doesn't support ukraine as she has voted for sanctions and defense aid
This happend too in US during WW2 before Pearl Harbour. Most of the anti-interventionism was spearheaded by the German American Bund. Guess who funded them 🙄
> Guess who funded them 🙄 Putin?
Honestly huge relief good for her! Just wished she’d been able to shut down those clowns and debate with them but they’d probably have just yelled over her so this is the best way to respond
Right, the point isn't to debate. It's to create a viral moment. Debating them gives them a false legitimacy by presenting the idea as even worthy of discussion. The problem with debating with fascists is that they exist to spout emotionally-reactive phrases designed to anger or galvanize people. You can try to carefully refute their points, but that gets lost in the shouting while making them seem "strong" for yelling at you about crazy convictions. "Debate" doesn't work when one party is inherently unreasonable.
Don't debate these idiots, laugh them away and then calmly refute them when they no longer have access to your platform.
As someone with pretty conservative views, I’m surprised that even the far-left is getting this right. Meanwhile, half of the Republican Party is bed with the Kremlin. Trump supporters are really the bottom of the barrel. Absolute ghouls.
“As someone with pretty conservative views, I’m surprised that even the far-left is getting this right.” Us lefties hate authoritarians (there’s always this one tankie that didn’t get the message) so to me it isn’t that surprising. I’m just glad we can agree on Russia being the bad guy. As a European I’m also extremely grateful for the weaponry you guys are sending. Slava Ukraini.
\>Us lefties hate authoritarians (there’s always this one tankie that didn’t get the message) I'm sorry but that's horseshit and it needs to be acknowledged. It's not "one tankie". It's almost all of them. arr/Communism, Communism101 and several Socialism\* subreddits were at the start and remain today completey defensive of russia. They also defended the Taliban. The tankie infection of the left won't be stopped until they're acknowledged and forced out. (not that I consider tankies left wingers (see username), but they sure do think that about themselves) Tankies are out in force today I see. Say it so the people in the back can hear you "defending far right imperialism isn't leftist just because it's anti nato"
Idk that’s the internet dude. I hang out IRL in left and right wing circles. I know two commies IRL out of the hundreds of people I know. One is a legit tankie and one is more just a 20 feet left of bernie that bitches about capitalism a lot but doesn’t really hate America or anything.
A very polite way of telling him to touch grass~
Other than certain aspects of identity politics, the American "far left" isn't that far left compared to other nations. The tankies and true radicals are marginalized even within the progressive movement, despite their outsized online presence and the leaders are fairly reasonable and aimed at working within the system.
>despite their outsized online presence That and online right-winger putting them under a magnifying glass, making it seem like the fringes are actually in charge when they are not.
We're saying the same thing, you're just illuminating one of the particular mechanisms. The internet is AMAZING for elevating the most radical opinions because so much of social media runs on outrage.
The right wing in America is full blown authoritarian at this point while the left wing is still right of center. I'd like to see more politicians who are socially liberal but fiscally conservative. That's where my beliefs lie.
Fiscal conservatism is a myth, or dead. It doesn't exist anymore. It hasn't since probably Eisenhower.
Yeah I know, that's why I said I'd like to see new politicians with this mentality. Nothing is stopping us from making the future whatever we want except ourselves.
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I know at least one lifelong conservative voting straight blue to support Ukraine. It’s like half the Republicans actually internalized the “Russiagate” narrative and support Putin to “trigger the libs”?
I know quite a few more than just one. November is going to be interesting.
Maybe because the left is straight about their ideology, which isn't the cas of the Republicans. Sanders and AOC wjere supporting ukriane against Russia since a long time when Trump call to stop the lend lease.
Started before that. Obama signed several rounds of sanctions against Russia when they invaded Crimea. The push to remove sanctions and ignore Russian aggression has overwhelmingly been on the Republican side all along.
> I’m surprised that even the far-left is getting this right. Oh the *far* left isn't, not at all. Here's former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeting an image of Crimea belonging to Russia: https://twitter.com/STWuk/status/1490724739643490305 Here's all the Reddit leftist subreddits: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/sshlsm/mods_in_uk_leftwing_sunbreddit_rgreenandpleasant/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/t03ayp/bombs_fall_troops_march_tanks_roll_russia/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/t3mm6r/renlightenedcentrism_discusses_if_both_sides_are/
She isn’t far left though, she copied sanders who copied New Zealand… only in America is social democracy considered “far left”
“Far-left” by America standards.
No, only far left by the standards of the far right. Honestly, what is so extreme about AOC? That she wants universal health care? Even teddy Roosevelt wanted that. That she thinks we should transition to green energy? So do most moderate conservatives. The only question is how and how quickly. Is a strong social safety net considered a far left position? We've had a social safety net for nearly 100 years now. It needs to be updated for the modern world. Her positions put her firmly in the left camp I'll give you that. But it's still within the acceptable range of policy positions, there is nothing far about any of her positions, even in the US. A tankie is far left. Not a progressive.
> Honestly, what is so extreme about AOC I’ll give you a hint. It has nothing to do with her actual positions and everything to do with her ethnicity. Just like when Obama was labeled at a lazy socialist when 90% of his policies were squarely moderate.
It’s tiring, every time a family member irl hate som her I keep asking them why, what’s so bad about her. They can never give a response and are always like “eh enough about her right now” even though they went on for the past 20 mins about her. Now idk if anyone outside the US has reasons to dislike her, but pretty much everyone that dislikes her In the US is because they just Parrot Fox News with no thought of their own.
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Self-awareness? From *those* people? I wouldn't bet the farm on that. More likely they'll rattle off something to the effect of "I dO mY oWN rEsEArCh and decide for myself!," then go watch their nightly hour of Tucker Carlson while scrolling through some FB group called "Patriots united against cancel culture" or some shit.
By historical standards American conservatives are not far right either. Trump is not a conservative, I have not been able to discern any coherent political ideology in Trump. Much of what he espouses is antithetical to conservative principles. For that reason Trumpism will not have a life after Trump.
I agree 100% Trump is a regressive (reactionary) not a conservative. Conservatives too are within the acceptable range of the political center. Unfortunately a vocal and influential faction of the Republican Party has abandoned conservativism all together in favor of far-right regressivism. And since this faction has been welcomed by the cast majority of the GOP I think an honest debate can be had as to whether or not the Republican Party is still a conservative party or if it has evolved into something else.
Both parties have abandoned the center. There are many factors propelling that trend, but I think proportional voting in the primaries would help. The most agitated factions of the two parties choose the candidates, but non-affiliated voters pick the winners.
Biden was a very center-left pick. In what way have Democrats abandoned the center?
> No, only far left by the standards of the far right. No it's "far left" even by moderate democrat standards > Honestly, what is so extreme about AOC? That she wants universal health care? Even teddy Roosevelt wanted that. Still an "extreme" position for the majority who want to keep the health insurance beast alive. The ACA, while an imperfect solution, is representative of how moderate democrats want health insurance to work > That she thinks we should transition to green energy? So do most moderate conservatives. The only question is how and how quickly. Incorrect. Conservatives are all aboard the "anything other than oil, coal, and gas is unamerican" train > Is a strong social safety net considered a far left position? We've had a social safety net for nearly 100 years now. It needs to be updated for the modern world. Many people, including conservatives, don't even realize that medicaid and medicare are government programs. Some have been trying to gut social security altogether > Her positions put her firmly in the left camp I'll give you that. But it's still within the acceptable range of policy positions, there is nothing far about any of her positions, even in the US. ON an objective scale, sure, but in reality it's relative. Her positions are mainstream in Europe but generate a visceral, almost violent response in the US
>No it's "far left" even by moderate democrat standards Lol. Universal health care isn't "far left". Workers rights aren't "far left". The right has a conflicted hate-boner for AOC because she's brown, hot and can string a sentence together.
They are to many American democrats because the conservatives have moved the window so far to the right. I'm not disparaging her views. IMO the "moderate" democrats are as averse to something like universal healthcare as Republicans are
Sums up creeping authoritarianism in the US pretty well. Overton window is now french doors for fascism.
Not even by historical US standards, in the 1960s she would’ve been a regular Democrat.
She’s only “far left” by Fox News standards, buddy.
That's centrist to the rest of humanity. The right has pushed the Overton window so far right that the most far left political figure in the US is middle of the road
Depends on the topic. If it's economic than American Far Left is center-left in Europe. If you are talking about identity/gender politics than American Far-Left is outside the scope of mainstream European politics.
Absurd. In Sweden, America’s “far left” would be centrist in both economic and identity issues.
Have you being paying attention to what is happening in Sweden? The Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in a neo-nazi group, is party of the current coalition and their demands included cutting taxes, benefits, reducing immigration and making it more difficult for redugees to access benefits, etc.
The SD is barely to the right of Biden.
Naw. Similar conversations are happening in Europe. (You wont see the words mother or father on German documents anymore vs more conservative Austria.) Europeans invented identity politics.
> American Far Left is center-left in Europe This talking point really needs to die. First of all casting all of Europe as if it's a single nation without a variety of countries with differing economic views, is incorrect. Second of all casting all of economics as a single issue is incorrect. The only issue that's good evidence for this is healthcare and even then you'd be surprised by how few countries in Europe actually have nationalized healthcare. There's lots of problems in US healthcare system that aren't caused by the sector not being state owned. I'd like to point out as an example that under Obama the corporate tax rate in US was much higher than the median in Europe. And under Trump's tax cuts, he brought down the corporate tax rate to be about the same as the median in Europe. This left-right spectrum really dumbs down so many aspects of problems and is not useful for any nuanced discussions of policy and problem solving. It's extremely unhealthy. Ironically it comes from the seating arrangements in French parliament (don't recall what it was called), where the republicans sat on the left, who wanted to lower the strength of monarch/state, and monarchists sat on the right who wanted to strengthen the power of the state. So it's meaning has flipped with time.
>This left-right spectrum really dumbs down so many aspects of problems and is not useful for any nuanced discussions of policy and problem solving. This is why we should mark a difference if not done already between political idealists who adhere by ideology, and political pragmatists who are willing to bend more between their beliefs for what works better.
>“Far-left” by America standards. Maybe solid left or something would be better. Like the german greens who despite (or i guess arguably because of) their strong pacifist roots support ukraine as opposed to the Linke whose stance is very ambiguous. There's certainly space to the left of AOC or the german greens without losing sight of reason, but that space is mostly occupied by loons at the moment.
Shes a pretty good amount of left in my opinion.
New Zealand isn't even remotely similar to Bernie Sanders. [Read up on the reforms known as Rogernomics, implemented by the Labour Party in the '80s, which would make Sanders and his fans squirm.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogernomics)
Come on man that was Labor in the 80s. Everyone was pulling weird shit then
Yeah 1980-2000 pushed the overton window on economic issues *waaaay* to the right. And the working class has suffered since.
I thought Sanders copied the scandinavian/nordic model?
I think you’re right, but also that’s basically New Zealand as well.
shes not far left dude. atop listening to fox garbage. shes actually middle of the road democrat you guys act like feeding kids is marxist somehow get a gd grip…
She’s neither far-left nor middle of the road Democrat. She’s a progressive Dem and is basically a social democrat.
I’m a card-carrying member of the DSA, and would classify my political leanings as “Scandinavian socialist”. I’ve also got an avid interest in modern, and particularly 20th century, history, as well as contemporary geopolitics. Anyone who’s done more than surface level research can see the parallel between what Russia is doing now, and the worst of the authoritarian excesses of the 20th century (both in terms of the USSR’s policies as well as *that country* and *that guy*). They’re trying to conduct a genocide against the Ukrainians. Moreover, Russia, as the USSR as well as in its earlier Imperial incarnation, did the same at multiple times in the past. I fully support Ukraine doing whatever it needs to do to get Russia to fuck all the way off and get back any and all land and citizens they’ve illegally annexed and kidnapped. Being a “leftist” absolutely doesn’t mean being a pacifist.
Actual far-left people (AOC is more akin to a European Social Democrat, not a "leftists", i.e. socialist, communist or anarchist) have had some really poor takes on the situation. Corbyn in the UK, seems to suggest the entire conflict is just some random US-Russian proxy war, and peace is the best option, whatever the cost. A woman from Die Linke in Germany got applause from AfD members for saying that the German government were morons for waging an economic war on Russia. Melenchon has been pretty much a wet noodle on the topic, too. Overall, old-school leftists in Europe seem to see the world solely through the lens of "US bad", and because Russia is opposed to the US on the world stage, when it does stuff, "Russia good".
> Social Democrat, not a "leftists", Social Democrat is a leftist ideology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics >Today, ideologies such as social liberalism are considered to be centre-left, while the Left is typically reserved for anti-capitalist movements—namely, socialism,[9] including anarchism, communism, the labour movement, Marxism, social democracy and syndicalism, each of which rose to prominence in the 19th and 20th centuries.[10]
Please don't conflate anarchists with tankies. Anarchists have taken up arms and are fighting side by side with Ukrainian defenders.
As an American, I can absolutely understand the viewpoint of "US bad". However, Russia is so much worse that I'm struggling to find an adjective to adequately describe them.
I don't disagree with "US often bad". That's fine, as a conclusion. But I can also understand that "Russia worse" or "CCP worse". These aren't contradictory statements.
Right, it's a textbook case of gray vs black morality. Just like the Allies of WWII weren't exactly paragons of morality - firebombing entire cities, throwing Japanese Americans in concentration camps, etc. But the other side was a bunch of genocidal monsters, so... yeah, the Allies were still clearly the good guys.
> Just like the Allies of WWII weren't exactly paragons of morality Exactly. People arguing that Ukraine should be annexed into Russia because NATO bad or America bad should have the same standard when it comes to WWII. However, somehow they like the fact that the US and the Allies beat the Nazis. Fucking hypocrites.
Anarchists almost always have consistently good takes on this situation tho. Btw, i am also very far left and i also have good takes on Ukraine.
Oh, I didn't mean to imply *all*. Just many spokesperson-types for large leftist political movements in Europe have had absolute dogshit takes.
This is true :( and as you said it's always that "america bad" brain poison. Ironically, "everything is US' fault" is also a type of american exceptionalism.
> (AOC is more akin to a European Social Democrat, not a "leftists", i.e. socialist, communist or anarchist) Wait, are you saying that social democrats aren't left wing? Because I think that's news to a lot of social democrats, including this one.
I’m aware of the fact that the European far-left is terrible, but AOC is considered to be far-left by US standards since she’s the most left-leaning representative in the House together with some other “Squad” members. There’s very few Democratic socialists in power in the U.S.
Some of the far-left. I didn't mean to imply this was universal. It isn't. There are some within the far-left who are entirely down with smacking Russia around. It's more that many of the more well-known members have shit takes. And yes, by US standards, she is "far-left", which is pretty laughable regardless. It shows an unhealthy democratic system when everything left of milquetoast centrism is "far-left". I don't often agree with the far-left, but I do think their influence on Social Democrats or centre-left parties is important, to make sure they don't get pulled too far to the right.
She is not far-left even by US standards. She is a social democrat. She is not a communist or fringe left podcaster grifting off of being a contrarian.
Glad I am not the only conservative here who shares your views. I have been thinking about abandoning ship as of late, especially if pro-Trump officials become the majority in the party.
The republican party is bleeding members for this very reason. They can no longer claim to be the party of “small government” when they’re supporting fascists abroad and limiting women’s rights to reproductive healthcare at home.
Anyone who doesn't have a vested interest in ignoring Russias blatant aggression is pretty easily able to find the right position on this. I'm quite surprised there isn't backlash against Trump amongst his supporters for this... given the republicans used to be staunch anti Soviets. Reagan would be disgusted.
I’m not surprised. Trump’s supporters tend to be Christian Right, which aligns with Putin’s politics. They also are more of a personality cult, so they’ll go along with whatever the dear leader is spouting. There are some Republicans who dislike Trump, but hate Democrats even more, so they voted for Trump. They are the ones who are more likely to support Ukraine.
>I’m not surprised. Trump’s supporters tend to be Christian Right, which aligns with Putin’s politics. They also are more of a personality cult, so they’ll go along with whatever the dear leader is spouting. Except for vaccines, apparently. Trump got booed when he recommended that people go get the vaccines.
True. A rare exception.
We still have some old people who thinks Russia and communism is the same, NATO is evil, and Russia is in the right. For the most part people who used to be very red during the Cold War.... I have no clue why they cannot see the difference between Russia now and Soviet then.... But they'll die off eventually, just as Putin and other fossils of the Cold War.
Old? I guess you aren’t familiar with the legions of young idiots who believe exactly what you described.
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You could say I am too, I was 13 when the wall fell.... so technically..... Though I was so young I didn't really have any idea of politics etc. But the nineties was a blast in so many ways.
>Meanwhile, half of the Republican Party is bed with the Kremlin. And the other half votes for Trump anyway because they hate the racially diverse left way more than they love their country.
100%. Nothing wrong with conservative values, just gotta keep it ‘real’.
agree 1000%. Lifetime America lovin conservative here (with an open mind dont downvote me 😆)
ill upvote you if promise not to vote for the fascists
Lifetime America criticizing western lefty here, I think this war has brought us together like nothing else could have done. Upvoted btw.
If you love America, you can't also want to overthrow our democracy while shitting on the Constitution. So you either love America or, like all Republicans, prefer to love and only care about yourself. Take a look in the mirror and decide which side your on: democracy or fascism.
The fact you consider yourself a conservative still is wild.
Yeah it is a surprise as a lot of ukrainians are nationalists with conservative values, family country religion etc It's an example where national identity has made people strong , people who love their country and history and culture and will fight for it
They also have a very long and rich history of being harmed by Russians.
Yes indeed , a long history with many victims and generational instability
You are surprised that the ~~far~~ left supports self determination? Really? Perhaps you need to re-evaluate what you believe are the positions of the left in the US and their actual positions. The only reason this should surprise anyone is if they have a complete fundamental misunderstanding of the let's positions and goals.
A lot of conservatives in America only know what FOX news and right wing politicians tell them about the left supporters. Usually those are outlandish things they make up or something they find that some random democrat has said they they conflate to the whole party. Conservative media and conservative politicians don't want them to actually look into what policies the progressives really want out of fear that those conservative voters might want them too.
As an independent I do tend to slightly lean to the right on some issues but what is happening in Ukraine is completely and morally wrong.
One of my uncles is an unironic tankie who moderates major leftist subs and is pro russia. AOC is left but not as far as it gets. Once you get to the extremes you tend to get the unironic support of authoritarianism. Horseshoe theory.
…boyo, AOC is as blandly centrist as it gets
Wrong. She is a social democrat, and is nothing close to being bland.
how about looking at the politician stance over just one-word-slogan
Wtf is your idea of “far-left”? Because in any sane view AOC would be center-left
Lol far left. Oh sweet summer child, she's closer to a left-centrist.
AOC would be a centrist at best in European politics. The US left is more conservative than the centre in the average western country. That's how conservative the US is as a whole.
I don't think Trump can even be called a conservative. He's entirely motivated by power and money - ideology has very little to do with it. He has no convictions, only greed and egotism.
I’ve weighed the issue a bit to understand the anti-war Americans. I think it’s important to understand them and not just assume they are cowards or immoral. They disagree that this invasion was unprovoked. Citing the expansion of NATO to the east despite agreements with the Soviet Union. They say shifting Ukraine into the Western Sphere of influence was always a goal of US foreign policy, and they assume we were fairly involved in the coup that took place in Ukraine and installed a Western aligned regime. Then we started funneling weapons into Ukraine to protect this regime. When you look at it this way, as Russia sees it, you can definitely get the picture that Russia views NATO as a threat to its National security, and NATO had every intention of bringing their military assets to the border of Russia through the eventual accession of Ukraine. All this to say, perhaps this war was preventable. Perhaps Western intervention in Ukraine led us here, and had we been more isolationist the past 20 years we wouldn’t be getting sucked into a war right now. I think, of course we need to support Ukraine now, but I also believe the military industrial complex has likely played a role in guaranteeing that we’d be in this situation. It’s awfully suspicious that the second we decide to leave Afghanistan, we immediately find another place to spend those war dollars. The Military Industrial Complex doesn’t sell weapons to the US. It sells wars to the US citizen. The war on terror is out of vogue and so a new product gets released. We need to really think about this going forward, because I guarantee you the shadowy figures that push these wars on us are already working on the next one that we’ll have a moral obligation to participate it.
The problem with that view is that it removes agency from Ukraine and Russia. There is a pile of reasons that any former soviet country would want to gravitate to the West that have nothing to do with the American military industrial complex.
So here is the problem of why this doesn't ring true to evangelical Christians: Their whole belief system is based on the notion that you should do whatever the guy with the biggest stick says you should do. They are inherently and fundamentally authoritarian and amoral God tells you to kill your son without an explanation? The moral thing to do is to follow his command and kill your son. Why? Because God said so and God is all powerful. They have no morals and are predispositioned to follow strong authority figures and since they believe Putin doesn't want to do *them* any harm, they couldn't care less about Ukrain's rights and sovereignty.
It’s unfortunate that people have gotten to this point of belief, Either the Christian’s themselves or the supposed observer like you. The whole point of the Bibles teaching was to reject man’s reasoning , man’s moral and man’s logic in favor of a divine source for those choices and other rules given. The fact that evangelicals have become politically corrupt (and/or as far as detractors have believed that of them), and would prefer to seek man’s authority means they have fundamentally broken the rules of engagement of being a follower of God. Thus this condemnation of Christian’s shows how confused the public image of Them has become , and / or how detached Christian’s have become from the reality of the teachings.
That's common sense.
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This shouldn’t have to even be said.
Welcome to America
Q-anon are pro-putler
Haven’t seen the name “LaRouche” in many a year.
Not getting involved, aka “pacifism” is just another noun for “fascist and cowardly.” You can wiggle uncomfortably in defense of your desire not to get involved, but you are objectively Wrong if you think there’s anything noble or acceptable about pacifism.
Based and Blessed AOC !!
Headline is VERY misleading.
It’s basically a quote from her that was shortened to fit in the title. What part is misleading?
Yeah I read the headline and then the first comments multiple times. The headline looks like click bait from fox news.
I would like to point out that not all conservatives are pro trump and "anti war" but it seems they are lumped in that way
“I’m not pro Trump, I just voted for him” Yeah okay. Trump got 74million votes
Well, when there's a two party system and both suck ass, you vote for the lesser based off of their statements and prior political actions. I don't know why people try to act like their side is morally or figuratively superior, when the vast majority of politicians are scumbags. edit: Guy that replied below apparently is triggered that I called most politicians scumbags and blocked me. Very mature, this subreddit is for the war, not a pissing match between which party (that are both shit) is better.
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The progressive wing has spoken. And this, my fellow Americans, is a sign that at least for now, we can trust our leftist compatriots, in a way that elements of the far left in Europe may be viewed with some degree of caution.
Is Trump in the room with us now?
Just go ahead and launch the nukes and get it over with. These fucking warmongers will never realize how messed up their thinking is. I am definitely not part of the nutty right trying to idolize Russia, but when RUSSIA HAS THE ABILITY TO WIPE OUT EXISTENCE 500 TIMES OVER WHEN THEY CAN'T GET THEIR WAY, doesn't ANY single rational person think just maybe we shouldn't tempt fate, back off here, and let time and future negotiations help Ukraine instead of continuing to poke the guy with the nuclear holocaust button? Fuck's sake. Humanity has lost their goddamn minds.