• DaTingGoBrrr@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    I don’t understand how the Democrats in USA can be considered left-wing. Sure, they are more left than the Republicans, but in my eyes they certainly not left-wing.

    • coolusername@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      surely if you enable a genocide that makes you extreme right right? so it’s extreme right and extreme right

    • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Marx and Engels were called “authoritarian” so frequently by their contemporaries that Engels wrote On Authority. What’s considered “authoritarian” is a moving target, an arbitrary line in the sand just for people who succeed in revolution, or at least in throwing off western Imperialist powers.

      If your argument is that Marxism isn’t Leftist then that’s hilarious

      • random@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 month ago

        my argument isn’t that marx isn’t left (especially since I’ve read his later works), nor that auth-left isn’t left… just that I’m an anti authotitarian leftist

        • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Gotcha, you’re just anti-Marxist then. Can’t say I agree with that, but that’s less nonsensical than saying Marx isn’t left.

          • random@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 month ago

            I don’t belive marx to be really auth, since he was striving for a stateless society, I just disagree with him on how we get there

            so I’m not exactly an anti marxist, but neither a marxist

            • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              What Marx calls the “State” and what Anarchists call the “State” are different concepts, ergo what Marx calls “Stateless” would still have hierarchy, and what Anarchists call “Stateless” would still have implementations of class oppression. Marxists and Anarchists do not want the “same thing.”

              If we take your statement that your only major aggreement with Marx is a “Stateless” society, but you’re working off the Anarchist definition of the State, then you are necessarily anti-Marxist. I’d rather you say that openly than try to twist Marxism despite being an Anarchist, so I hope it’s just a misunderstanding on your part.

              • random@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                1 month ago

                well, then I’m an “anti-marxist” I wouldn’t really like to put it that way tho, since I agree with him on a lot of things

                also sry for twisting things, it’s been a long time since I read marx

  • Nougat@fedia.io
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    1 month ago

    Turns out, if you’re further left than either realistic candidate (because FPTP), it makes it really easy to figure out who you should vote for. “I wonder if I should vote for the person who’s not left enough for my liking, or the one is so far beyond that as to be the diametric opposite of left. Whatever shall I do?”

    • lengau@midwest.social
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      1 month ago

      Yeah, the “you’re voting for genocide” argument is also ridiculous, as the choices essentially boil down to:

      🔲 One genocide (with a potential of partial mitigation)
      🔲 2+ genocides (and the one being even worse)
      🔲 Don’t care (in green)
      🔲 Don’t care (in yellow)

      etc.

      Genocide is bad. That should not be a controversial statement. I will use my vote to choose the least genocide that it has the power to choose, and I will use my other energy to advocate for less (and hopefully zero) genocide.

      You don’t have to like that fact. I certainly don’t like it. But this is exactly what harm reduction looks like.

      • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        This is just a monstrous reframing of a bipartisan genocide. Voting dem or voting rep is a vote for genocide, full stop, because they support the same genocide to the same magnitude, materially. Pretending Dems are better because genocide makes some of their voterbase sad is wrong.

        I will use my vote to choose the least genocide that it has the power to choose

        Then vote Greens or PSL.

        • lengau@midwest.social
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          1 month ago

          Then vote Greens or PSL.

          Sorry, I’m not going to vote “don’t care” on genocide no matter how many faux leftists pretend it’s the morally superior option.

          • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            It’s morally superior to vote for genocide but pretend your flavor of genocide isn’t the exact same as the other flavor of genocide.

            • lengau@midwest.social
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              1 month ago

              Look, if you don’t care about LGBT folks, women who need abortions, asylum seekers, etc. you can pull that “don’t care” lever. But “I care about making a symbolic, but ultimately toothless, gesture about Palestine more than I care about the lives of thousands, possibly millions of others” is what voting third-party is telling the system right now. If that makes you feel morally superior, we’re at an impasse because I don’t know how to explain to someone that an action to save lives is more powerful than an unrealistic gesture about saving even more lives, but which will realistically increase the amount of death and suffering.

              • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                1 month ago

                Is there a red line for you in the sand, or would you vote for Hitler if 101% Hitler was running? When do you abandon hope in the Democrats, if being genocidal Imperialists doing nothing to help marginalized groups, and are running to the right of Trump in 2016 with respect to immigration, doesn’t?

                • lengau@midwest.social
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                  1 month ago

                  That’s a non-sequitur, because that’s not what’s happening by any means. But thanks for ceding the point that you’re okay feeling morally superior by doing something that’ll get more people killed.