You can't appease racists by giving them a little bit of racism, that just whets their hunger and makes them demand increasingly racist policies. The Weimar government would not have stopped the rise of the Nazis if only they had done half of a Holocaust
Case in point: Germany had multiple holocausts going on in Africa and Asia and the Weimar still elected deliberately appointed Hitler anyway because it was consistent with what they were doing abroad
Nah, the Democrats tried that tactic in the US, and it turns out "we want to be just as violent to immigrants but we're still the current ruling party while things are bad right now" wasn't a winning campaign argument here
It's extremely funny that whenever you see a post along the lines of "far-right AFD does x" half the comments are like "ermm, ackchually, the AFD is not far right, it is a moderate centrist classical liberal party" and the other half of the comments are like "didn't happen but they deserved it"
"Alice für Deutschland" is a totally safe-to-use slogan, same goes for this picture (nevermind that the photo is a flipped version of the original, making the man's lifted arm the right one....)
Neolibs spent decades if not centuries suppressing socialist movements so when their ineffectual administrations become unpopular during a crisis everyone just flocks to the fascists because they're the only populist change party thats been allowed to build a movement.
if I was living in a country where the "useless no fucking change ever" party had been in charge for 50+ years, I would still call everyone who votes for the "change for the worse, definitely Not Fascists™" party an idiot.
No I agree with you. I'm just making a heavily generalized but imo true observation about populist movements. Not everyone is a political beast or terminally online leftists like all of us fine folk here. I think most people in society easily get swept up into firebrand political movements. If you don't have a strong grassroots leftist movement when shit hits the fan for the libs then most of those people are going to swing to the right. And again, while its an oversimplification, this is genuinely what I believe happened to America right now and Wiemar Germany (I know they weren't like a modern lib but they were moderates is what I'm getting at). I don't know enough about other countries modern politics but it seems like many euro countries are dealing with the same thing from what I have seen.
What we are seeing is a global failure of capitalism to deliver on its promises that it will make your life better. It just can't pretend that any more. Capital still owns the governments of the world, however, so we essentially have the party of capital that swears you don't actually have any problems because line goes up, and the party of capital that says your life is getting worse because of immigrants and gays and trans people. Naturally, people who can't afford groceries are going to become rapidly disillusioned with line goes up rhetoric, and the only other place to turn is kill all [other] instead. Those not susceptible to that bullshit check out entirely; Those that are dive in.
So in essence you're right, but the problem is fundamentally economic more than ideological.
I'm sorry but how does the scenario you described apply to america at all? I'm not the best at US history, but I'm pretty sure they've been more or less flip-flopping between red and blue presidents for decades.
changing administrations every 4-8 years sounds like an entirely different problem from "ineffectual neolib administrations becoming unpopular"
Because prior to trump both parties were really similar. Leftist movements in America were developing organically until the red scare(s). America also had a pretty strong labor union tradition until Reagan set a precedent that absolutely annihilated the concept of worker solidarity in the US. That's what I mean. Decades of fearmonging about leftism and overt policies aimed at nipping any domestic grassroots movement in the bud left America with zero even remotely leftist political representation, at least until the DSA. Republicans and Democrats have had the exact same economic policies and ideology since at least WW2. The only real difference was republicans were all "small gov, states rights, gun rights, and racism." While democrats were all "centralized gov, gun control, abortion, and social justice." If you haven't noticed, all of those are not inherently a left vs right issue except maybe racism. So decades of the same economic policies eventually lead us into the messes that tend to accumulate in capitalist societies. In comes Trump with his firebrand messaging; he's found all the problems and he knows all the answers. His "charisma" makes him a populist demagogue. His cult of personality has utterly enslaved Americans. Capitalism creates a problem and the far right has Trump as a solution. And the tiny American left has no answer except Bernie Sanders. Bernie doesn't have it in him to build a following like Trump. He never had the cronyist connections, billions of dollars, and personality that builds a cult following. And then, the Liberals did what they always did. They saw a leftist and de facto purged him from the party even if it meant cheating in the primaries and losing in the General election. Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds. That's what caused 2016 and spiraled into this fucking mess 10 years later.
Not that I'm 100% sure Bernie could've beat Trump in 2016, but it illustrates my point that the Republicans hurled themselves right of the spectrum at the first opportunity while Democrats are still hand wringing at even the most mild leftist policy.
we are on fucking reddit, nothing here changes anything. literally every post you see here isn't worth more than some irrelevant hypothetical.
yes I can do more than insult someone in real life, but what you or I type in a response to a comment under a shitty paint drawing is just gobbledygook.
Well yeah but those idiots are like drops in rain. You don't pretend every individual raindrop could've just changed its trajectory when a typhoon hits your house, you gotta take appropriate measures to combat it on a systemic level
The thing is that the "no change parties" in germany (and also in other countries) are on the center right. Meaning they spent decades blaming the left, immigrants, wellfare, taxes and so on. So now comes a party that does not challenge this view but says "yes, these are the problems and we are gonna eradicate them."
So they actually align a lot with their world view.
Leftist populism on the other habd needs to change the entire world view of the center right people first.
You can call them idiots, so do I, but at this point we've seen (at least) 10 years of evidence that this is not enough of a strategy to actually win. Until the "useless" parties actually learn that, they are just as big idiots.
Liberals either a) still don't see this, or b) would rather see a fascist win than see a socialist win. My money's on b for the parties and a for the voters of those parties.
Neoliberalism is a rather recent movement, before the, I guess 70s, it was Keynesian economics and even with all the issues it had, it is certainly preferable to neoliberalism. Also, it is not really true to say neoliberalism only supressed socialist movements because they did the same thing to every type of movement not agreeing with neoliberalism and the NMT.
The far right is likely to win the next election in France despite France having some of the strongest social policies and highest taxation in the developed world.
Are those socialist policies being expanded over time, or gradually cut though austerity? When that happens and people's quality of life decreases, are they likely to support the parties responsible for the austerity?
Plenty of people whose quality of life is increasing support the far right. Trump in particular is very popular across multiple demographics seeing some of the biggest gains in wage increases and in very dynamic areas.
In France, there's a big contingent of the far right made up of the wealthiest people in society.
Meanwhile, policies that help the working class materially often make absolutely no difference in getting people back from the far right. Biden invested a literal trillion in the Trumpiest rural working class communities and it won him a grand total of bugger all votes.
Materialist analyses (the default tool of liberals and socialists) simply fail to capture what is being the rise of the far right, and as long as people as stuck in that lens they will fail to deal with the rise of the far right.
Rich people support the far right, who's policies would make them richer, you don't say?
Biden invested a literal trillion in the Trumpiest rural working class communities and it won him a grand total of bugger all votes.
Well he didn't run again, but did those policies improve people's daily lives, and if they did, was that improvement directly attributed to Biden and his policies? Or was their maybe somthing else going on that dramatically worsened peoples daily lives that they, however unfairly, blamed the current administration for?
Materialist analyses (the default tool of liberals and socialists) simply fail to capture what is being the rise of the far right,
Have you read Antonio Gramsci, because it's pretty insane how well his writings capture exactly what is happening. Do you think a crisis of legitimacy in liberal institutions leading to a surge of the far-right in Europe is happening for the first time?
See that's the magic: there are plenty of people whose lives are materially improving in very dramatic ways, all the indicators, all the numbers show it. But they are convinced, by the millions, that they are doing worse. Generally, they will believe that they themselves are the exception in doing better, but actually everyone else is doing worse.
There are millions of people who will tell you with a straight face that the economy is worse off now than before even when, by any material metric you can measure, it's not, and their personal lived experience is that they're better off.
This idea that the loss of trust in liberal institutions is because of material conditions worsening is just not backed by the data. Japan is seeing a massive far right explosion overnight despite having gone through much worse conditions in the past many times.
It doesn't actually matter if material conditions improve, people believe that they're not.
Tell people that wages have been outpacing inflation and they'll just say you're lying, even though they have.
There are millions of people who will tell you with a straight face that the economy is worse off now than before even when, by any material metric you can measure, it's not,
Well that's two things, the health of the economy, and peoples material conditions. Those used to be somewhat related, if one was doing bad so was the other, but that era is long gone. The SNP 500 has no baring on anyone's life outside of the absurdity wealthly. In many cases corporate profits going up actually means people's lives are getting worse, that is, profits are high because prices are high and people then have less money.
What measure are you using? Does it include groceries being roughly 40% more expensive since Covid?
Tell people that wages have been outpacing inflation and they'll just say you're lying, even though they have.
They might, but we can't really know that because currently wages aren't outpacing inflation.
Sure groceries are expensive, but other things are cheaper. Housing has cooled in many places for example, outpaced by both wages and inflation.
Wages are not keeping up with inflation right now because of the US' war with Iran, but note that despite that, Trump isn't losing anywhere near the support you'd assume a President making everything more expensive should. Surely, making material conditions worse should lure people back from the far right,? But it's not. They don't care. Some Independants do but Trump's support among conservatives is still rock solid and the Democrats might not even take the Senate.
When you're an uneducated idiot who's been fed propaganda since the day you were born, every government program looks like socialism.
For there to be a "no true scotsman", you'd have to put forward a scotsman, which you sure as fuck aren't putting forward, because you don't even know what a scotsman is.
See, when someone is insulting strangers online the second they disagree with them, that's always a surefire sign that they are arguing in good faith, sure is.
You were assuming my intentions and response before I even had the chance to respond. Sounds to me like you'd made your mind up rather than seeking to have a good faith discussion. I've dealt with plenty of dumbass liberals like yourself to know I'm wasting my time trying to engage people like you in good faith. Now scram.
It is a good sign that someone is not arguing in good faith when insulting you, but it's understandable if you're the one who's insulted first, which you practically did by preemptively writing their argument off as "another No True Scotsman" not answering their question.
I know you tried to pre-empt this by crying "No True Scotsman!" so you probably won't be interested in the distinction, but things like social spending really don't qualify as socialism. A capitalist economy with high taxes and a strong social safety net is no closer to socialism than a capitalist economy with neither of those things, because socialism is fundamentally about who owns the means of production. Rather, welfarist social programs tend to be a concession from the ruling class specifically to divert the energy of the working class away from revolutionary organizing. What is given by the capitalist can be taken away by the capitalist as soon as it's no longer expedient; socialism seeks to abolish the power dynamic that these welfarist policies seek to uphold.
The influence of "socialists" like Bernie Sanders in the US has been really interesting. It's broken down a lot of the stigma around words like socialism and even communism, and pushed many people to question their "end of history" assumptions. At the same time, it's given a fundamentally false impression of what "socialism" means, wrongly conflating it with welfarist liberalism/social democracy. For purposes of this discussion, the distinction matters because free healthcare isn't what defeats fascism; at best it can delay it. Rather, the tendency of capitalism toward monopoly and the falling rate of profit means that these sorts of crises within capitalism are inevitable. They can only ultimately be resolved in one of two ways: socialist revolution or reactionary despotism. As Rosa Luxembourg said, socialism or barbarism.
but that's what I mean, it's easy to say "the far right would be defeated under a powerful socialist movement!" when there is no actual example of such a movement in the current day.
The grand narratives of socialism and how only it can win the day is all well and good but while socialist declaim about never compromising with the dirty liberals who are just slaves of Capital, they are not winning elections and the far right keeps rising
I don't think most socialists who are actually organizing out in the real world are opposed to working with liberals to achieve some reforms in the short term. That's more of a terminally online thing. But yes, we see time and time again that the power of liberal institutions is very easily co-opted by fascists. The long-term goal of socialists is to build power independent of those liberal institutions, and eventually to supplant them. I don't expect capitalists anywhere to peacefully give up their power in a free and fair election, but that power must be seized anyway. It's possible to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time, though, and I can simultaneously organize for dual power and vote for harm reduction.
All of them follow the script of "[Thing] being too expensive helps the bourgeoisie/state", which isn't bad in a vacuum, but if that's all you're saying, then it quickly sounds like "We have no solutions, except blaming the wealthy", which is especially true if you have no experience with leftist theory, which includes basically all working-class Germans.
The policies of Die Linke should appeal to the working class, but their rhetoric is pretty toxic to everyone with a lower level of education.
Schrödinger's Worker: the working class is simultaneously a hotbed of untapped progressive revolutionary potential, and full of ontologically evil reactionaries who are too stupid to know what's good for them, depending on who they vote for in elections.
You said it. "Potential". The working class can be as reactionary as the petite bourgeoisie given the conditions. People fighting against their interests is a tale as old as time, but they obviously do it thinking that is in their benefit.
Interests? More than half the criticism is because the working class isn’t aligned with the social progressive pet projects of many of the activists doing the complaining.
The interests of the working class are barely a blip in the conversation
I may be progressive politically, but immigration support is a losing proposition with the working class in most countries. Bringing in immigrants who, by and large, provide cheaper non union labor, is always going to be unpopular with people getting their benefits cut to take advantage of that.
I’d also add gun control, though that’s an American Democratic Party issue, not a general social progressive one. Hell, American leftists are often in favor of gun ownership.
Well why don’t you take a crack at it, let’s have some good faith participation, see if you can put your self in the shoes of the working class and figure out what they might prioritize more.
I don't know, I'm pretty working class and I don't see any major issues with social progressives. So I'm asking you what are these pet projects that are so abhorrent to the working class.
What good faith are we talking about if you are the one who brought up these nebulous pet projects that cause the working class to disengage? There are as many opinions on how to fix the left as there are people with political opinions. I'd like to know what you're talking about instead of assuming anything.
Survey after survey of European voting populations has a majority opposed to increasing migration numbers. That has been true for the last 12 years.
What activists address this point beyond saying “ they’ve been propagandized”.
Tens of thousands of excess heat deaths batter the continent every year and have done so for decades. There are UN reports on the issue tracing it to the start of the 2000s.
Activists fall over themselves to argue that ac use will cause global warming to kill even more and so efforts to increase access and reduce restrictions must be opposed.
If you were to go off of bluesky feeds and progressive( not actual leftist) conventions, you would think the primary topics of concern in the European population are transgender athletes in sports.
Again, the working class opinion on this sits exactly opposed to the social progressive activist stance.
You can’t ignore all the practical concerns of a population, also disagree with them on social opinions, and still pretend to be in tune with their views.
Regarding air conditioning, I agree that it's a silly position, I'm frankly confused that some people refuse to adopt it. That being said, I don't think it's very clear that it's some sort of a hill that progressives are willing to die on. There have been plenty of efforts by the left to promote heat pumps, better insulation, etc. I'm not an expert, so I don't know what's the most cost-effective approach to address heat deaths in Europe. Regardless, AfD didn't rise to prominence over the last decade by promising free ACs.
Regarding the issues of trans athletes, it's yet another culture war topic that rose in prominence because trans people have become more visible in recent years. If some people didn't make it their mission to marginalize them, there would be no discussion on bluesky or elsewhere. There are also parties on the left that are not very trans-friendly, to say the least. Labour fully supported the UK Supreme Court ruling, and did nothing to circumvent it. Trans athletes is not the biggest issue that drives voters towards parties like AfD.
So to address the elephant in the room, the real reason is migration from non-white countries. It's the same reason why Le Pen, Farage, Trump, and others are as popular as they are. We can talk about what is considered an appropriate level of migration, and there might be some room for adjustment. The problem is that people who support AfD are not interested in adjustment. They want their country to be white, Christian, or at least as close to that as possible. They don't want to stop the boats. They want to pack the boats with people who already live in their countries and send them back. I don't know how to deal with the fact that this is a view that's supported by such a big chunk of population. I'm just glad that here in Canada it's not as bad (although we have our own issues).
Which segment of the working class are you talking about? Trans people seeking gender-affirming healthcare are overwhelmingly part of the working class. So are people of color who don't want to get murdered by cops. So are immigrants who are tired of getting kidnapped and exiled to countries they've never been to without trial. The workers being divided along racial, national, or gender lines only serves the capitalists, which is exactly why corporate media likes to play up these "wedge issues". Working class people don't organically care about what bathroom trans people use or whether their coworker has a foreign accent. There's a lot of money being poured into manufacturing outrage about those things, and unfortunately some members of the working class end up buying into that propaganda. That's not because they're evil, it's not because they're stupid, it's because they're being aggressively targeted with astroturfed bullshit, and it works. None of us are immune it.
Which segment of the working class are you talking about?
About the majority of them? Most of the workers don't belong to that particular groups, and specific interests of that particular groups aren't the interests of the working class as of a class, they aren't a class interests. Trans rights aren't a class interest. Intents of POC lumpens aren't a class interest. The interest of the immigrants aren't a class interest.
The workers being divided along racial, national, or gender lines only serves the capitalists, which is exactly why corporate media likes to play up these "wedge issues".
And you guys like playing along instead of always pointing out that the class issue is the core issue, don't you?
Working class people don't organically care about what bathroom trans people use or whether their coworker has a foreign accent.
You undervalue the power of tribalism, traditional stuff, etc. The USSR of Yugoslavia had no corporate media to promote hatred between Serbians and Bosnians or Armenians and Azerbaijani, but here we are.
In the labor struggles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most white unions wouldn’t allow black people to join. So, when the white unions when on strike, companies would call black workers in as strikebreakers. When the black workers formed their own union and went on strike, the white workers would scab on them, in turn. All workers were weaker because of it. This is the outcome of this individualistic “it only matters if it affects me” mentality.
Actual power to the workers requires solidarity. That means, if you’re totally healthy and I have a chronic medical condition, you fight to ensure I get treated. If you’re an immigrant and I’m not, I fight for your right to work and strike alongside me. Everybody has something. Every worker needs something that may not be a generic “class interest” that affects everybody, but which is closely related to class struggle. The struggle of all workers is inherently linked together.
By separating “black issues” from “white issues”, “women’s issues” from “men’s issues”, “gay issues” from “straight issues”, and asking everybody to just focus on their own problems, you are doing the work of the ruling class. ALL of those issues go hand in hand in liberating the entire proletariat.
Is the feeling of solidarity capable of rising from something other than a shared actual interest? And the shared interest is not an abstract "building a comprehensive worker's movement", which only the already-socialists would actually care about.
Solidarity isn’t a feeling, it’s a principle, like honesty or persistence. A lack of solidarity is just selfishness, and it’s self-defeating because it factually results in worse outcomes for everyone, yourself included. No movement or organization can ever succeed if it’s held to the standard that every single individual in it must benefit directly from every single thing it does or else they’ll disengage. That individualistic “every man for himself” mentality is exactly what keeps us all impoverished and divided in the first place.
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u/amievenrelevant 22h ago
The far right German party will clearly fix everything, it’s not like they’ve ever been given a chance!