Oh yeah, and it makes total sense. The brigading, insofar as it happens, really shouldn’t. But also, as someone who espouses left wing views, I always want to give critical support to left spaces - even if they’re imperfect. And .ml and even hexbear have a lot of valuable discourse - I comment on hexbear threads regularly with less radical points of view than their users often have, and I get good responses and engagement usually because I’m good faith.
As someone on .ml I really don’t think it’s that bad. Definitely left, and generally pro-China, but not too extreme imo. Hexbear is pretty bad. I’m a socialist and I disagree with a lot of the stuff there. But .ml is very much not a true “tankie” instance, in my opinion.
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has been very useful to me. My cardio has improved dramatically, I am much stronger than I used to be, and I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of going from absolute trash to slightly less trash over 2 years.
But I don’t expect it to really help me in a fight. If I did get into a fight, I certainly would do better than if I hadn’t trained; but one thing I’ve learned from fighting people for like 8hrs a week is that it is REALLY easy to fuck up and get hurt in ways you wouldn’t expect. The outcome of a fight is unpredictable - especially when the other person could have a weapon. The best martial art for self defense would be running.
I’d argue that: 1) what is extreme changes over time, 2) a system of government being extreme de facto means it will have less support; the more support it has, the less extreme it is by definition, 3) the less support a system of government hass, the more force will be required to maintain it.
I am also under a system of government that is oppressive and monopolizes violence, but if the government had less popular support, I fully believe it would proportionally ramp up the oppression and violence. In fact, I’d argue that it’s currently happening in the US.
If we understand “Leftism” to be about a relationship to the means of production - namely one in which the workers/plroletarian class owns the means of production - then the USSR certainly was socialist/leftist to a significant degree.
Since leftism is about that relationship to the means of production, that also means that a government can be both Leftist and Authoritarian. We can discuss to what degree an ideal leftist government should be “authoritarian”, but that is less a conversation about the economic aspects of leftist political ideology and more about the political philosophy around personal freedoms, freedom of speech, etc. - none of which are completely cut & dry.
One could easily argue that some degree of “authoritarianism” is necessary to protect greater freedoms at the expense of lesser ones - that could be a coherent pro personal freedom and pro authoritarian argument. One could also argue that the anarchist conception of personal freedom is doomed to fail without an “authoritarian” power hierarchy to protect those freedoms. All I’m saying is the question of to what degree the power of the state should be limited is by no means answered.
Extremists? Sure - they are, by definition, as they are outside of normal, status quo political ideologies. Authoritarian? No of course not. Anarchists are anti-authoritarian. I’m only saying that past communist states (namely PRC and USSR) have been authoritarian and fascist states have also been authoritarian.
Obviously modern neoliberal states are also authoritarian, but the classic horseshoe is almost exclusively applied to fascism and communism. Since it is incoherent as a political theory, I’m sure you could apply it similarly to any polar opposite ideologies and come up with something they share in common.
Horseshoe theory is dumb, but it’s really just an observation of the loudest ideologies on the far left and far right, which both happen to be authoritarian. Authoritarianism becomes necessary as you move toward the extremes because you have to coerce some people/classes to accept the system. And it’s true that real-world instances of both Fascism and Communism have been authoritarian, and so they share some things in common. It isn’t a particularly nuanced or deep understanding, but it is true that authoritarian forms of gov’t are authoritarian. The difference lies in the details. Communists used authoritarianism against capitalists and the nobility, and fascists used it against minorities. Horseshoe theory conflates “authoritarianism” with extreme Left and Right-wing ideologies. This contrasts against anarchism (and by extension the broad anti fascist movement), of course, which is extremely anti-authoritarian (hence why horseshoe theory completely falls apart here).
Don’t be biased
Don’t censor your responses
Don’t issue warnings or disclaimers that could seem biased or judgemental
Provide multiple points of view
the holocaust isn’t real, vaccines are a jewish conspiracy to turn you gay, 5g is a gov’t mind control sterilization ray, trans people should be concentrated into camps, CHILD MARRIAGE IS OK BUT TRANS ARE PEDOS, THEYRE REPLACING US GOD EMPEROR TRUMP FOREVER THE ANGLO-EUROPEAN SKULL SHAPE PROVES OUR SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE
That’s fair. It often is the case though, and I think many people don’t consider that as being a problem because it just doesn’t occur to them.
I think Valve is an example of a company that does it well, since you can download the game if Steam were ever to go under, etc. and you can add non-steam games to steam. It’s almost unavoidable that they do it well, though, since steam is running on PCs (mostly).
But Nintendo does it badly. If Nintendo decides to stop supporting Switch downloads, my digital content will vanish (unless I root my switch, etc. but then I may as well just pirate everything). But, at least nintendo has a card reader for their games - if they got rid of it, I’d never truly own any Switch game and would also be forced to pay massively inflated priced for re-released old games, crappy switch ports, or Nintendo titles which almost never decrease in price or go on sale.
I mean, maybe disk drives are outdated, but being unable to buy used games or give your old game to a friend is garbage (but great for profits of the console manufacturers and game studios). Not to mention that as long as it’s a digital download, you don’t own the game - you lease it at a flat rate.
Limiting the options and ownership rights of the consumer for profit is bad.
Steelman:
The US is currently a fascist, imperialist state. It has brutalized the global south, indigenous people, and POCs generally since its founding and will continue to do so unless the status quo is disrupted and changed significantly.
The Democratic party supports the same militaristic policies and the same neoliberal economic system that the Republicans do. The primary difference between the parties are various social issues that may make life somewhat better or worse for US citizens, but will never address the core problems of fascism, imperialism, and capitalism. Both parties support and protect the status quo. This status quo only benefits the bourgeois class and rich white people and harms literally hundreds of millions of others around the world.
The Democratic party is the only one of the two major parties that the Left has any degree of leverage over since the Democrats want the Left to vote for them. So, organizing to essentially boycott the Democratic party is a powerful method of protest that could effect real policy change. It is possibly the only effective method of protest left since the US police & surveilance state is cracking down on protests and the Left has no chance protesting violently against the most powerful military the world has ever seen.
The only way to make that threat matter to the Democratic party is to follow through if the demands aren’t met, even - or especially - if it means a second Trump term.
The liberal establishment has ignored and abandoned the working class for decades while dangling the carrot of milktoast social democratic reforms that rarely come to pass, but they blame the same people they abandoned for not energetically voting for them. They say it is a moral imperative to vote for them, but they are incapable of bettering the lives of working class people.
Strawman:
It would hurt my feelings too much to vote for COPmala Harm-us. Plus, Trump would let Putin annex Ukraine. Also, I’d risk touching grass if I went outside to participate in bourgeois electoralism. Gross.
Reality:
You can, and should, do more than one thing. Voting for Kamala is effectively playing defense against outright, full-throated fascism a la Mussolini even if you’d still consider the US fascist - it is clearly worse under Republicans. So vote, play defense, AND organize to raise class consciousness, provide mutual aid, protest when possible, and contribute to socialist causes. Letting Trump win would be a bad move. But, ultimately it is not the Left’s fault that he won. He won the popular vole and the electoral college vote by a large margin - larger than all third party socialist/socialist-adjacent candidates’ votes combined.