Grassroots organization will save us.

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[–] 62 points 1 year ago (25 children)

Yeah. Newsom trolling Trump is funny as hell. He is still a piece of shit, though.

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  • [+] -10 points 1 year ago (22 children)

    Not a Fascist piece of shit though

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  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago* (21 children)

    Gavin is a continuation of the same type of Neoliberalism that made people apathetic enough to let Trump win.

    Neoliberal control of the left leads to fascism

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  • [–] 38 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    I wish people could really understand this.

    Neoliberalism leads to fascism. Not like in a cartoonish they sit around in some fortress of evil planning a Nazi takeover.

    Neoliberalism all over western society has shown itself ineffective at meeting people’s needs.

    Neoliberalism wants free markets and limited governments. This leads to capital gaining a huge amount of power because the government categorically doesn’t want to regulate them. That power eventually turns to exploitation of the citizens and capture of the government.

    Exploited citizens with an ineffective government get frustrated with a system that’s not meeting their needs. This is the dry tinder in which fascism catches fire, a charismatic person shows up and says “give me unlimited power and I can fix this quagmire you are in” and a lot of people go “fuck it, it can’t be worse than this” and you get a fascist dictator.

    Neoliberalism leads to fascism not because they are the same but because neoliberalism creates the perfect environment for fascism to sprout and grow.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I would argue that fascism is more of a response by the elites to prevent citizen’s frustrations from becoming revolution. While fascism certainly uses populism to get power initially, it does not rise organically from the people, but is rather imposed by the ruling class.

    I think we’re mostly agreeing, but it’s important to explicitly point out that fascism is a tool of class warfare. This explains why Democratic leadership is mostly just standing by and watching - they are also members of the elite (or are bought/controlled by the elite), so they are terrified that regular people will demand change that removes them from their high tower.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I agree with you there.

    I think that’s part of the issue with neoliberalism, since it doesn’t care to reign in the abuses of the elites.

    It’s interesting how the frustrated masses though are so ready to pick someone that’s clearly on the side of the ruling class.

    I think that’s the part which might be more prominent in western culture right now. This paradox where people’s lives are made worse every day by businesses, businesses jacking up their rent, businesses gouging prices, businesses invading their privacy. And they finally have enough and go “we need someone to come in and run this country like a business.”

    It’s amazing to watch millions of people have legitimate complaints and be completely unable to identify the source of their misery, so much that they hand it even more power.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Even more astounding to me is the large segment of the population who know that Trump is fascist and trying to become a dictator, yet can’t even be bothered to show up at a protest for two hours on a Saturday afternoon.

    Literally all of my family and friends except for my partner (I’m so lucky there) fall into this category. Only two friends have attended a protest with me. One was clearly there just for the experience and the other was complaining the whole time that the protest won’t do anything.

    You know who has been showing up in my area? The fucking boomers. It really feels like my generation is still waiting for mommy to fix the world for us.

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  • [+] 1 point 1 year ago (8 children)
  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It’s a good question.

    Here are some facts we have to accept about the world first

    • as long as authoritarians point their abuses inwards there’s no amount that causes the international community to put a stop to it, especially not against the United States.
    • those with authoritarian power rarely surrender it willingly
    • institutions do not historically stop fascism

    So we are already down the road, whether we collectively want to admit it or not.

    Here are some things you can do that might lessen some damage but are unlikely to stop the train

    • vote for neoliberals. Go for it, it’s better than the alternative. But if putting neoliberals into power stopped fascism, then electing Biden in 2020 wouldn’t have been followed with trump in 2024
    • protest, at least the peaceful do nothing protests that are allowed here. If your protest doesn’t make those with power worry then it’s almost really a protest but a state sanctioned pressure relief.

    I would consider myself further left than any party and I hear people that share my views say that you should organize and build community solidarity. These are nice things, we should care for our neighbors and through tough times community can be a major source of strength. Not super likely to topple fascism but could make living through it better.

    I see 3 scenarios where fascism fades into, well not really the background but the middle ground.

    1. Trump dies. He’s an old sick man, if he dies there will be plenty attempting to take the mantle up. Apple is still Apple without Steve Jobs but there not really a Steve Jobs replacement.
    2. Trump starts stupid wars. Stupid here being war with NATO, like trying to take Greenland by force. A war with Iran is also stupid but unlikely to turn people against him.
    3. Sustained general strike. This could actually work but the people of this country dont seem to have it in them.

    I think we should also understand that the ability to maintain an authoritarian state has improved since Hitler and Mussolini. Hungary, Turkey, the Russian Federation are all examples of effectively authoritarian dictatorships wearing the trappings of democracy to some degree.

    America has long been a nation bought by lobbyists to do the bidding of the wealthy. It’s not too crazy to think that we end up just zombie marching along with just enough trappings of democracy to say “it’s not too bad yet” for a long time. We have the national guard occupying US cities while a masked police force abducts people off the streets and illegally traffics them to other nations to be imprisoned without due process and disappeared. There are many red lines that have been crossed that could have been when people stood up, but everyone is waiting for something. That thing might never come.

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  • [+] 3 points 1 year ago* (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Join a Marxist organization and build a socialist revolution. Communists are historically the most effective weapon against fascism.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    So when the other side uniformly votes for a full Fascists who do we vote?

    With our hearts, a third party candidate?

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  • [–] 36 points 1 year ago

    Yes go after the dems for being complicit with thr Trump regime and also being shitty people themsevles who are intentionallh suroessing the left wing candidates.

    But im also enjoying the petty trolling of Trump and dont mind giving Newsom a little bit of approval for it.

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  • [+] 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    Head in the sand. They've had it there since the election. If they just weather the next 3 and a half years, everyone will join together and just vote to fix it and our benovalent left will step in to selflessly serve us, unwind all this mess and make sure it can never happen again.

    They don't realize that this will be the point in history they look back at hundreds of years from now and try to figure out what happened. UK is going nuts, EU is going nuts. Privacy is under attack, speech is under attack. We're all sliding into China's model of control, but we're not even getting the socialist advantages.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    The U.S. has been taken over by fascists who are not so slowly dismantling everything that was good about the government and strengthening everything bad. We likely already don't have anything close to a democracy anymore.

    Yeah but theres a centrist neoliberal in Cali who has jokes!

    yay

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    If Newsone wants your vote he has 2 years to come up with better policies. Lol but he's not going to do that. If he wanted your vote he'd rep your positions but he wants to rep other interests.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    if Burnie succeeded in anything, it's getting the party to at least pretend to be leftist on paper occasionally. accepting the top candidate before the primary is a mistake. make them earn your vote.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    Dems suffer greatly in finding the greatest shitbags possible who aren't officially republican.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Vote Blue No Matter Who means they don't need to find a good candidate, and are free to ratfuck as much as they'd like during primaries. After all, the alternative is a republican, what are you going to do, convince 70 million other people to all vote for the same third party?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    I prefer the more tactful, progressive in blue states (even third party vote if they don't get the primary), but blue in red states to slow them down there.

    I wouldn't say anyone should be loyal to newsom,but we should be pragmatic during elections. And remember there are more races than just president.

    We should support our progressive candidates to go independent if they have to.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I'm still livid about the fact that last primary, I literally skipped over Gavin Newsom, researched every single person running in the primary, and crossed off every single name that was worse than him.

    He was one of three names not crossed off. Out of two dozen.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Not once have I ever had anyone giving me shit about bringing up Newsom’s transphobia respond to the fact that LGBTQ political leaders and rights organizations within California, some of which have been fighting for LGBTQ rights for decades, immediately condemned his statements. Those people and organizations are all just too stupid and idealistic to understand how politics works, I guess. 🙄

    You’d think a ‘liberal/leftist’ screaming at a trans person to shut the fuck up about transphobia would cause some cognitive dissonance, but nope, not even a little.

    It would be great if they spent even 1/10th the energy putting pressure on Newsom to stop being a fucking transphobe.

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  • [+] 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    But later when there’s another shit-neolib candidate is?

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    Hillary Clinton was up 17 points two years out, there's plenty of time to fuck this up

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    2 years is plenty of time for democrats to get the message ‘i will not vote for anything but a progressive proven to run on progressive policies.’

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    I hope so. The problem is the Democratic Party would rather lose again than fight for universal healthcare, federally mandated maternity leave, national carbon tax, childcare programs, ending genocide, etc. ; and the democratic voters would rather "vote blue no matter who" than lose to the Republican Party again. So we end up with these establishment corporation oligarchy-asskissing candidates.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    if that’s the case then nobody should vote for any democrat. because at that point they are not controlled opposition, they are just controlled. and the facade will have run its course and actual action would hopefully follow

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