Antifa hides their faces from authorities because they would otherwise be persecuted by the state. Patriot Front has the backing of the state (many of them are police themselves), they’re hiding their faces from the people. Antifa are protecting their lives, Patriot Front are protecting their reputation. One is pragmatism, the other cowardice.
“Old guard” isn’t referring to age, it’s referring to the neoliberal democratic establishment who are currently facing challenges from progressives and democratic socialists. George Santos is completely unrelated to anything that’s being discussed here.
It had to be a BadEmpanada video of course. His entire channel is dedicated to attacking other leftists for not being perfect platonic ideals of communism as he understands it. He would accuse Karl Marx of being a liberal if he lived in the same time period.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt, leader of the Democratic party at its most popular and most powerful
They should try to heed the wisdom of their predecessor, or they can instead demonstrate how far the party has fallen.
In the United States, democratic socialists’ policies tend to support working within the capitalist system rather than abolishing it outright.
In the United States, Social Democrats call themselves Democratic Socialists. Or are they just using social democracy to get their foot in the door so democratic socialism can follow? Only time will tell. I know what I’m hoping for, but I do worry a bit that there isn’t a follow-up plan. Even so, social democracy is much more fertile ground for a real socialist movement to thrive.
When people say democracy, they usually mean direct democracy.
This just isn’t true. The majority of democracies around the world today are representative democracies, and people colloquially refer to them simply as democracies.
And even at that, the party establishment control who we can even vote for. So we only get to choose from the representatives they give us for the most part.
That’s partly true to varying degrees depending on what country you’re referring to, but it also isn’t that simple. The methods the establishment uses to control who gets party nominations are mostly indirect (i.e. media manipulating the narrative, PACs and dark money to campaigns, etc.). I think you’re being overly cynical - which is fair - but we have more power than you think we do, we’re just not very good at using it. Cynicism itself is one of the ways that the establishment controls who gets elected.
In short: the establishment has a stranglehold on democracy not because our democracies are fake (flawed, maybe even rigged a bit, sure, but not fake), but because they have us out-organized.
The future doesn’t have to be set in stone. We can create the future we want by demanding it and taking action. I can see a future where a progressive is elected president in 2028 and a critical mass of people successfully petition that president to issue pardons.
A republic is a type of democracy. Specifically, it’s a representative democracy.
Mamdani’s kinda straddling the edge. He calls himself a Democratic Socialist and uses anti-capitalist rhetoric but his policy platform is just Social Democracy.
I didn’t reply to them, I replied to you.
Why the fuck do you think they’re endorsing candidates in DNC primaries, genius? They’re literally doing exactly what you suggest.
They’re already relevant. That party of a hundred thousand has become a household name among the Democratic voting base because of the insurgent campaigns they’ve been running and winning against the DNC establishment.
This chart is useless to roughly 5% of the population. Is there a version that doesn’t use red and green?
We gave the Iranian regime extremely powerful leverage on the global stage and galvanized support for the regime domestically, so not great. If there was a possibility of a popular revolt happening in Iran the war definitely killed it. The introduction of a common enemy made a lot of the domestic opposition fall in line to defend their sovereignty, and the ones who didn’t were successfully suppressed by the regime with fewer people willing to stand in solidarity with them.
It’s an Economist article. They write from the perspective of capital owners. Of course they’re going to belittle socialist ideas, because they present a threat to their wealth. If they were smart they would support social democracy in order to preserve the capitalist system, but American capitalists are arrogant and shortsighted.
When I come across someone IRL who loves AI I avoid the topic around them. My opinions on the topic are likely to offend them, so to avoid hurting their feelings or causing conflict I won’t mention them. Now, if it’s someone I care about I’ll find a way to gently broach the topic because I know that heavy AI use is causing them harm and I don’t want my family and friends to lose their grip on reality.
Supporting Israel is supporting terrorism.
The US was founded by displacing indigenous people. Are you saying that indigenous people should retake the US? All Israelis do not agree with Netanyahu.
Does peaceful coexistence and equal rights not even occur to you, or is it that you have no desire to peacefully coexist with those who are different from you, that you would frame the discussion as if the only possibilities are one ethnic group displacing the other?
Both indigenous Americans and Palestinians have a right to self-determination, and yes, I do support reparations and land reform in the US that restores stolen and privatized land to the commons, so long as no one is currently living on it. In the case of Israel much of the land has been stolen in living memory and all homes occupied by first-generation settlers should be immediately restored to the Palestinians they were taken from (or their nearest relatives if the IDF already killed the previous occupants in the genocide). Second-generation and so on can continue to live where they are, but it will be in a free Palestine where Palestinians must be able to return to these places and live freely alongside them. The apartheid state of Israel is not entitled to exist, people are, and the name of the country in which they live scarcely matters more than if they have equal rights.
Biden was not a centrist. He allowed illegal migrants to flood across the border despite polls showing that most Americans wanted tighter border security. Trump made border security a top issue.
First off, Biden did cave to you reactionaries and tighten border security in the second half of his presidency after he had reversed only some of Trump’s border controls in the first half. Second, immigration is not harmful (although the exploitation of immigrant labor is, both to the immigrants themselves and to the working class as a whole) and the only thing strict border security and mass deportations do is cause astronomical suffering and deprive millions of their basic human rights.
Democrats should be anti-Netanyahu, not anti-Israel
This is like saying you should oppose Hitler but support the German Reich. Israel is a settler-colonial apartheid state that was established by the violent displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in living memory and motivated by Zionism, an ethno-supremacist fascist ideology that works towards- and has succeeded in - establishing a Jewish ethnostate that upholds a regime of apartheid, occupation, and genocide.
Progressives might win in some areas because voters are frustrated with Trump but later, they might regret electing a progressive just as some voters now regret voting for Trump.
Voters elected the centrists who have been in control of the party for years and now regret it. Trump’s victory is the establishment dems’ failure, and their refusal to learn and change is rooted in their willful incompetence, lack of any real conviction aside from maintaining their comfortable positions, and their willingness to cater to the interests of their wealthy donors over the interests of their constituents.
Democrats simply wanted a candidate who could beat Trump. In Kamala Harris they chose the wrong person. She was so dumb that she said she wouldn’t do anything different than Biden despite knowing that the GOP strategy was to link her to Biden.
It’s odd that you criticize her for being like Biden while advocating for more of the same. How do you cope with the cognitive dissonance?
Saying this after they all got presidential pardons is just insulting.
Antifa is an enemy of the state because the state is an enemy of the people. Also, it truly exposes the hypocrisy of right-wingers like yourself when you celebrate guilt by association with an ideological stance (antifa is not even an organized group) after years of proudly proclaiming yourselves as free speech absolutists. You’re libertarians when Democrats are in power, but fascists when Republicans are in power. Pretty convenient for you guys, huh?