Guys, at this rate I don’t think the revolution’s going to happen anytime soon.
It’s easy to convince people to do wrong if you convince them there is no right to be done.
That’s why Tankies are so hard to tell us both sides bad.
It’s how we’re conditioned to behave by society from birth. Break the rules and you get punished.
‘Centrists’ don’t help much either because they too hold the left to a higher standard than the right and always seem to be looking for any excuse to whip out the ol’ “so much for the tolerant left” so that they can feel better about themselves when they vote for who they really wanted to vote for anyway.
People on the right can say in plain English “I want to dismantle women’s rights and put all gay people into camps” and the ‘centrist’ will be like “hmmm yes that seems like a valid political opinion”. But the moment someone on the left drops the high road shit for once and bites back, the ‘centrist’, clutching pearls is like “See? This is why I’m supporting the bigots that hate everyone, because you SWORE and that’s unacceptable!”
That’s not a Centrist viewpoint at all. That’s a solidly right viewpoint.
The Centrist would, however, say “look, if you’re going to make your whole vibe about tolerance, that’s cool. I love it. But my homie, that’s a slippery slope you haven’t fully negotiated yet. So when your less disciplined people start to be big picture tolerant through on-paper intolerance, don’t expect me to do the same mental gymnastics to defend it that you do with your mom at Thanksgiving. How about you solve the problem before you create it by not being sloppy and bumbling your way into an obvious trap every bully has pulled since the dawn of time?”
But hey, as a Centrist, the Left can’t discern me from someone like Bush 43 or a raging MAGA freak because anything right of far left is a legit fascist. Which is why I cant hang with you all, your labels are weird. But the Right usually wants to hang me for being a traitor, so one of y’all is far more worth dealing with occasional cringe.
But hey, as a Centrist, the Left can’t discern me from someone like Bush 43 or a raging MAGA freak because anything right of far left is a legit fascist.
:-/
How about you solve the problem before you create it by not being sloppy and bumbling your way into an obvious trap every bully has pulled since the dawn of time?
There is an argument that politics is the art of representing the aggregate interests of ordinary people on their behalf. And what a successful politician needs to succeed is a rapport with the community such that they can channel the socio-economic demands into the bureaucracy efficiently.
Unfortunately, we live in a country where seats are heavily gerrymandered, information on candidates for leadership is either highly censured or ludicrously unreliable, and singular individuals are expected to represent populations on the scale of 300k to 40M at the national level.
Socratic Rhetoric isn’t the issue here. You’re not engaging in an Ivy League debate between peers. You’re talking entirely about the ability to manipulate public opinion at a national scale. A lot of that boils down to mass deception, demagoguery, and pure tribalist politics.
There’s nothing you can say or do that won’t result in the opposition calling you a foreign infiltrator or a degenerate loser or a reactionary terrorist. You’re trying to play chess with a stampeding bull.
Yeah, I’m aware. And I appreciate your response.
Sadly, I see a lot of the same at even the state and local level. Really, it comes down to branding with parties as a fundraising avenue, and only having Pepsi and Coke as the options concentrates both wealth and power as narrowly as possible.
Sure, that’s not for me. I don’t need to have a fit about it either, until I’m being force-fed one of them which, in my opionion, results in the detriment of the Constition and the nation. I’m happy to hold my nose for things I don’t love for anyone that rounds up to close enough. I’ve pleasantly done that for decades.
Which doesn’t mean that far-left folks mischaracterising anyone not as far left as them is fair or accurate. Incremental change in policy and political culture is how it works. Always has. That’s literally PoliSci 101 after you define terms.
So when the far left folks demand everyone be where they are or it’s a disaster, the rubber band they held snaps and they lose any momentum going their way by getting out too far to still remain in touch with the vast majority or voters. I want things moving father left than they are on …well, most things, but the Left would rather push me away and move even farther left and act out about how I’m not chasing them.
Which is how we arrive at where we are, bifurcated with nothing left but contempt for anyone thinking with a sliver of rationality who never felt at home with either group.
I’m still always surprised when people say “slippery slope” in earnest, as though it isn’t a well-known logical fallacy to be avoided. As though, at no point along the slope, would we be able to reverse course. “This thing must necessarily lead to that thing over time!”
Okay Nostradamus.
Here, it’s what I hoped was obvious shorthand for a subjective value set with no clear, well-defined boundaries of what is or is not defined for the practice of tolerance.
Most descriptions of tolerance are set by simply being allowed to exist, or a set of principles which are a bit nebulous in practice, like how the UN tries to define it.
Do you have a favorite courtroom-ready definition of the words “tolerance” and “intolerance” that would apply in every state equally to show anyone what they can and can’t say with perfect objective clarity? I would love to hear it.
So when people are defining the term with the absence of the opposite of the term, it means the term is ultimately being used to define itself.
It’s only a fallacy when there is not evidence given that each step leads to the next. A slippery slope argument is perfectly valid when evidence is provided.The fallacy is in the implicit and unexamined assumption that a must lead to b.
E.g
Taking heroin once is obviously a slippery slope to becoming a heroin addict because taking it once causes you to crave taking it again.
100% agreed. I used the graphic to illustrate the point but really should have just linked to the Wikipedia article, which explains the difference.
In the instance I replied to, the slippery slope is invoked but the steps are not described, and no evidence is provided.
Besides, I’d argue (in good company) that centrism is and has been a cloak for fascism.
That’s not a Centrist viewpoint at all. That’s a solidly right viewpoint.
Well then all I can say is that there’s a fair number of right wing people that consider themselves ‘centrists’ either dishonestly or genuinely believing it. It’s actually what I was going for by putting centrist in quotations.
But something that I will never go near the centre on is human rights (whatever that looks like). For example, women should have full rights over their own bodies and not have to die in hospitals when something goes wrong because doctors don’t want to risk harming a foetus (that ends up dying along with her anyway), trans people should be allowed to exist without fear and persecution from other people that can’t mind their own damn business and everyone should be able to choose their religion or lack thereof. For me personally, these are the kinds of things that are more important than the price of eggs. And anyone that ignores those issues because of the price of eggs, does in fact look pretty similar to a MAGA to me.
As far as the slippery slope goes, I believe in no tolerance for the intolerant. Once you’ve shown that you just will not give other people the respect that you personally want, you don’t deserve it.
Look, I can’t help that you have limited real life experience, but the middle is crowded with people of a wide variety of political beliefs. For some, like me, I’m more center-left, supporting things like obvious human rights issues, but I won’t go all in on some of the more outlandish financial policies. And I simply will not give machine politics a moment of my life. I’ve seen it fail miserably too many times to think it can work just because one side does it.
But so when your retort to someone not exactly like you is “you don’t deserve respect until you’re someone exactly like me and think only how I think,” then your genuine intolerance is out there on display, and yet you aren’t self aware enough to realize you’ve just said it.
It’s disappointing that you jumped into that within A single comment. Seriously?
then your genuine intolerance is out there on display
Did you really just “so much for the tolerant left” me? Hilarious. Thanks for the laugh, considering where this conversation started. I’ll put it to you this way seeing as the concept seems so difficult for you to understand. If you go around condemning gay people to burning for eternity and telling women things like “your body, my choice” then I am not going to respect you because you clearly have no respect for anyone else.
And just to clear things up in case this is the reason that you’re taking it so personally, when I say “you”, I am not pointing a finger at you, I am using it in a general sense, talking about the people that do these things.
You arrived here telling me that my first comment was actually about right wingers while calling yourself a centrist, but you’ve already started clutching your pearls just because I don’t want to ever meet in the middle with hateful bigots and tried to shame me into changing my position by pulling “iNTolERant LEft” schtick. So I dunno.
I’m asking you if you understand if what you in particular are saying is, by it’s nature, a contradiction. You were never tolerant from the start, and never really pretended to be. You just think you have labels that magically confer this value on you without having to do the work.
You don’t represent the Left as a whole. But you’re picking up a lot of cues with Left-leanimg terminology that create a dogmatic point of view, regardless of the left/right side of things.
Friendo, I’m happy to hear your thoughts on this, as it adds to my understanding of a diverse range of points of view. Tell me more.
Your logic is bullshit, you are a “clever” one. You know that quote about antisemetism and valuing the meaning of words? That’s about you. Logical fallacy and dissociation are all you have to offer the conversation. You wouldn’t discern good faith if it was hanging from your fucking nuts.
They talk big words and say nothing. It’s an argument method where they attempt to look good/smart and goad other people into looking angry. In this particular case, they want you to reply angrily and say “Look how intolerant they are to me, and I was just pointing out how intolerant they really were!”
What specifically is bullshit?
What is the logical fallacy?
Without actual details, it’s hard to see this as anything more than just a lazy personal attack.
From the condescending opening line to the blatant straw man, it almost sounds like you’re replying to the wrong comment.
A large portion of “cancel culture” also was the left (and liberals) choosing the “moral high road”, because they convinced us someone’s 8+ year old mistake made them unfit for anything. This got so bad, the right started to manipulate it, even on the old internet, and nowadays there are a lot of callouts astroturfed by kiwifarms and other far-right doxing groups (some of it moved to Discord/Matrix).
You can see it plain as day in the last election’s rhetoric. Democrats insist that a simple Republican Majority is enough to end democracy nationwide. However, they also believe Republicans can trivially block any liberal initiative from the legislative minority.
“As you can clearly see, in this info graphic design I am the Chad and you are the Wojack.”
Palestine is now going to get genocided even faster, trans and gay people are going to suffer, and there’s a real chance of a country falling into actual fascism which will then cause a domino effect Rippling out into the entire world. This is your fault. You did this. You and your idiocy.
you are secretly wishing for this to be true so you can gloat because youre mad they didnt vote for Kamala (who was going to continue the genocide).
It is disgusting.
Preach
Ah yes, the old enemy of the left: the left.
Damned Leftists! They ruined the left!
You leftists sure are a contentious people.
You’ve just made an enemy for life!
You’ve just made an enemy for
lifeleft!ftfy
Right… Except this is true for all online communities. People talk a lot of shit and complain a lot. Cope with it or log off.
Or blame it on the left, lol, whatever makes you happy.
I am left and this is so fucking true though. So many pussy-ass towel wringing gutless cowards just want to pick bones out of tofu than actually act to make a meaningful difference because they are frozen with indecision over acadmic moral quandries
Bones out of tofu is a great expression.
Its a Chinese idiom that works very well
I wish we could all just agree on a few basics and do it. Like, can we support unions and do mutual aid? Yeah, it’s not nearly enough to fix all our problems, but it’s a start. Maybe it will help bring about anarcho syndicalist trotskyist solarpunk feminism, and maybe it won’t, but it’s a start.
I haven’t figured out how to channel it into convincing others, yet (though I haven’t done a lot of activism for, like, going on a decade now), but I have been having the thought, for the last 4 years, that focusing on tangible goals could really help us.
Just seeing the Republicans turn half a century of steadfast obsession into actually overturning Roe has me thinking we need material results fast.
Because, if the one constant for our side since the 60s has been anything, it’s been a slow erosion at our ability to even effect change.
I feel like even the need for lockstep consensus to work together wouldn’t be so direly needed if we had rank-choice voting and a dismantling of the two party system.
To use your union example, more unions mean a slow of concentration of wealth which means less influence for the wealthy upon our society including more stability so there’s less desperation to vote for a Hail Mary solution like thinking Trump ever gave a single care about the price of eggs.
Just…really concentrating on tangible goals and carving out progress on them.
Of course, we’d need your aforementioned agreement, for that…
It’s interesting how your comment undercuts the message that it’s trying to express. You got the vocabulary wrong. It was a good try though.
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Except in crisis, a society benefits when everyone does nothing renegade.
The problem is we’re in crisis, largely due to a lack of information about the scope and breadth of that crisis.
The scope(of ice ream) and the bread of that crisis.
I just hope we can switch to renewables and stop facho putin, everything on top will be the cherry on the cake IMO.
I think you underestimate my ability to fuck things up. Especially my plans to do nothing.
As a leftist its also important to keep in mind we do differentiate between leftists who hold some opinions we disagree with compared to a Liberal who disagrees with us on nearly everything. Especially when said Liberals demand to be treated like leftists yet support imperalism, genocide, apartheid, capitalism, bigotry, and yet constantly call people “fake leftists” or “tankies”.
Maybe I’m in a bubble, but I have yet to see anyone who’s not genuinely a tankie being accused of such.
Ive seen people be called tankies for not supporting Kamala and opposing Liberal Democracy
for not supporting Kamala
That’s wild. I’ve never heard that take and have a difficult time believing that it is common.
opposing Liberal Democracy
What alternative were they in favor of?
That’s wild. I’ve never heard that take and have a difficult time believing that it is common.
World users were literally calling anyone who critiqued Kamala Russian bots, were you not paying attention for the last several months?
What alternative were they in favor of?
Depends, some leftists support a workers democracy, im personally an Anarcho Syndicalist
World users
Ah. I think I see where the problem is. I believe my instance defederated from
lemmy.worlda while back.You arent missing out on much
I’ve seen conservatives lob the word tankie around before like they do with other scary sounding political words. But not here on lemmy. “Tankie” has a very precise meaning on lemmy that everyone here seems to understand, despite a few tankies trying to gaslight people into thinking the term has “lost it’s meaning”.
For those who don’t know what it means, what is “clear definition of tankie”?
In a nutshell, alternative-imperialists with a leftist bent. They’re hypocrites. “Imperialism is evil…with these exceptions, those empires are cool”.
It’s frustrating trying to talk with tankies, because really I agree with practically all of their criticisms of the US and a few criticisms of NATO and the West at large. But then that gets turned around into a justification for X formerly-socialist country drafting soldiers to invade sovereign country “Y” with practically unanimous resistance, and I just don’t see how the hell that’s supposed to help the working class of either state.
someone who claims to be leftist but tacitly or gleefully supports authoritarianism, imperialism, or violent repression. Many are easily identifiable by their pointing to places that are not The West™️ and smoothing over, apologizing for, or denying, blatant horrors on the basis that they are unfriendly with the west. sometimes called red fascists.
It’s actually important to ostracize these people as they are obviously the most blatant opportunists in leftist movements looking to implement authoritarian repressive regimes.
claims to be leftist but tacitly or gleefully supports authoritarianism, imperialism, or violent repression.
including those resisting US evil? Not supporting a war on Russia is tankie, because being too stupid to not understand we the people lose, and Russia needs to defend itself, is not as important as believing US propaganda that Russian leadership is evil for defending itself?
on the brightside ya’ll normally just can’t resist outing yourselves.
Is there a name for leftists that believe everyone deserves every war the US tells them is a “strategic imperative”? Even the ones where they use motivated nazis and very illiberal Islamist rulers?
Spoken like a true lib who hasn’t grabbed a history book in their lives. You have done exactly ZERO study of this so-called “authoritarianism”, its characteristics, actual comparisons with western systems, and the reasons for certain degrees of oppression in different systems. Your entire analysis is vibes-based, and doesn’t hold up to the slightest scrutiny, and leads you to being on the side of the US Department of State propaganda on 99% of occasions. Remember, people called us tankies 20 years ago for opposing the invasion of Iraq, because “Saddam is a rabid dog”.
really searching for straws to grasp here eh?
“I’m a leftist, and I proudly support 0 historical leftist movements which actually achieved anything”
yet support imperalism, genocide, apartheid, capitalism, bigotry
Yeah as a liberal I resent this. Im against all of these things except that I believe that the world is capitalist and would probably not be really any different even with a sudden communist takeover. Power corrupts any system just like it always has so you need safegaurds and checks that our system did have until everyone decided to throw out baby with the bath water
There are ideas i like that are communist(social programs, centralized production, not a huge fan of not owning my own stuff, but i dont think businesses should really own land), but i believe there is a lot of resistance to it and a slow burn towards utopia is a more fruitful endeavor.
safegaurds and checks that our system did have
Uh… Assuming you’re from the west. The US was founded on slavery and genocide, and western Europe got to where it is through colonialism. What checks and safeguards did our countries ever have?
Checks and balances, regulation and with a united constituency you would have more accountable politicians. Instead we got the left and right doing the splits so hard we got the rich lefties hopping ship to the right
Again, never had such thing as “accountable politicians” in the west, we’re founded on colonialism, slavery and genocide. We’ve never had these “balances and regulations” that you talk about, otherwise the people in charge for the invasion of Vietnam, Iraq, the bombing of Libya and of Yugoslavia, and an honestly endless list of atrocities carried out by the west, would have suffered consequences
Have you heard of Market Socialism?
An idea with merits but again corruptable. Profits still exist but they go back to the cooperativee? The co-op would have to be uncorruptable or it would end up just like a corporation
Consider syndicalism, a free market of worker ran (and owned) syndicates (buisnesses).
not a huge fan of not owning my own stuff
Communism is when I own your toothbrush. Hand it over liberal.
Come and get it 😄
And how do we do that?
This is the internet, everyone is as anonymous as they want to be. Lots of people find these posts by browsing by All, so they’re not likely to be aware of (or care about) the rules for a particular instance. If a Liberal and a Leftist wander into the same community, it can be hard to tell them apart unless they’ve made politics their whole identity.
Its pretty simple, do you support genocide?
You had me until “tankies”. Tankies are scum and don’t need defending.
What’s a tankie?
It’s a political slang word. It refers to those who support leftist authoritarian regimes such as communist, China. Regimes where the state can do no wrong and the people do all the wrong so the state must step in to crush the people and “protect them” from dangerous, Western and capitalist ideas. Pretty sure the name derives from the 1989 tiananmen square incident.
The term has nothing to do with Tiananmen square and it’s usage actually predates the massacre by almost 40 years.
Yeah you’re right. I was for some reason conflating the USSR invading Hungary
You cant use your favorite strawman argument? How sad
It’s not about defending tankies it’s about people who are constantly shifting the focus of conversation to the most mockable section of online lefties.
The ruling class don’t waste their time distancing themselves from qanon, they focus on furthering their class interests and emiserating the poor.
Liberals who are constantly calling people tankies are helping the ruling class.
I’m not taking cues from the far-right in not denouncing our worst aspects when I see them and letting them take up shop in our spaces. I don’t see the need to whataboutism to them either and will call that out, but I don’t want them in spaces I’m in either.
No one’s defending tankies, nor saying we shouldn’t call them out. The original commenter was saying liberals call all manner of leftists “tankies” when they actually aren’t in order to derail them.
The next commenter stated: “The ruling class don’t waste their time distancing themselves from qanon, they focus on furthering their class interests and emiserating the poor.” Distancing themselves includes calling them out. So it sounds to me like they’re saying we need to be pragmatic like the ruling class and not distance ourselves from tankies, which is absolutely not something I’m ever going to do for those slimeballs. Actively doing it like some sort of performance apropos of nothing? Sure, maybe not. But if a tankie ever tries to associate with us, they need to be given the boot over their disgusting ideals.
I’m saying the need to instantly and constantly denounce tankies is tedious and counterproductive. I’m saying that policing the boundaries of leftism based on dumb shit said online is a reactionary distraction.
It’s a common strategy used to distract from the core issues. It’s like when supporters of israel go “but do you condemn hamas?!” or “oh, I notice you don’t criticize hamas as much (therefore you must support them)”
I feel like you thought they were disagreeing with you, when they were pointing out the hypocrisy of Liberals but I dunno…
It’s a strange state of affairs, there is a right wing recruitment pipeline deticated to making fun of liberals for being “cringe but also wrong”™.
An interesting experament you can do, replace “leftist”, “the left” and “liberal” with “SJW” (swap the insider and outsider language) and ask yourself how much and in what interesting ways does the sentimate of the post change.
Damn SJWs supporting checks notes imperialism, bigotry and capitalism
Interesting, highly synthetic (in this case right wing “Woke SJW”) propaganda becomes clearly fraudulent when material complaints like yours arise.
The Left: Fractured Butt Hole. 😞
From my casual observation, leftists tend to be a lot more individualistic and tribalistic than people on the right, to the point where they would much rather join the right just to spite another left group.
I’m not sure about the right, but the amount of arguing over labels and shit is ridiculous on here. Half the time people never get past whether something is left/liberal/tankie/right/whatever and completely ignore whether an idea or policy is good on its merits.
And if they do, most of the time it devolves into whether or not it’s the most ideal in every way possible. People are content to let perfect be the enemy of good.
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This so fucking much
maybe i’ve just instinctively avoided places like this but that isn’t my impression at all, i find that a lot of people agree even if they don’t call themselves leftist at all, in fact the whole problem is that basically everyone has nearly identical beliefs but can’t bear the thought of voting for leftists who want to actually treat people fairly.
frankly the sentiment of this post feels like astroturfing to sow discontent.
No. The most important thing is to gain virtue points by pointing out other people doing something wrong.
Ah, of course. Always place fighting other leftists before fighting capitalism!
