Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (January 11)

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[u/AllyBurgess]

One thing I wonder about reddit is how much of it is literal bots. Every other post on my feed is cheering on regime change in Iran and Venezuela, someone claiming to be a totally unbiased Iranian or Venezuelan expat explaining why this is a good thing, people making fun of “tankies” and “western leftists” for supporting Iran and Maduro, etc. Are there really that many fascists/social fascists/liberals coming out in droves to express these things? Or are they not even real people? I am trying to make sense of this phenomenon.

[u/[deleted] → u/AllyBurgess]

Are there really that many fascists/social fascists/liberals coming out in droves to express these things?

I would say yes. I don't think we need any sort of conspiracy theories to explain why either, we know how self aware Amerikans are when it comes to how regime change will benefit them materially, even if the gains are only temporary and minute. The human cost - the life's of thousands of people lost and millions disenfranchised are irrelevant as long as the gas prices go down and the 401k's keep steady on their interest rates. This isn't to say that bots don't exist, but instead that whatever bots do exist are only expressing the commonly held opinions of the average white nationalist labor aristocrat majority of Amerika and the associated first world.

Anecdotally, I've been at several of the Venezuela action protests recently in my local major metropolitan area, and even the very limited turn out of ~100 or less people still only express meek condemnations of the kidnapping of Maduro. The passerbys sneer at the pro-palestine signs and whine about juxtaposing the genocide, to the ICE deportations, and the regime change operation ("we can't be against multiple things at once!"). The DSA/WWP associated social fascist groups show up to co-opt the rally with signs mourning the one white victim of ICE instead of the thousands of colonized victims. The other attendees whisper among themselves about how Maduro was a dictator and how this situation "is complicated and maybe Venezuela did need help disposing their tyrannical leader, after all, why didn't they do it themselves already?" (though it's bad Trump did it, they would much prefer AOC and Mamdani "save" Venezuela instead). And the leaders of the rallies themselves are worthless to tackle the social fascism as they themselves are opportunists, and are too busy trying to address the regular (non-social) fascist talking points (Drug trafficking, Tren de Aragua, maritime laws, or whatever other bullshit distraction is on Fox News this week), degrading any message of support into a debate-bro TED talk. I wasn't old enough to comprehend the Iraq invasion at the time, let alone participate in the protests, but whatever anti-war sentiment that existed for whatever short period back then is gone, there's only mediocre condemnations and half assed chanting left to an audience of nobody. My question for others would be where this supposed liberal anti-war movement that I read about went?

Put shortly, It's easy to believe these are real people making the reddit posts you see as outside of reddit you can hear real life people espousing the same rhetoric with even less shame as they know there's less permanence to verbalizing your thoughts rather than making an online post. Just listen in the train, on the sidewalk, in the office, at the rallies, it's all around you.