In a discussion with progressive libs talking about all the virtues of being a democrat supporter and being opposed to fascism and the current state of affairs with ICE and I reply by telling them that the dems have supported ICE at every turn and they have taken every opportunity to increase their funding so how is that leaning away from fascism by their own reasoning? I also said that if a Nazi promised to do 50% less holocaust, would that also qualify as leaning away from fascism (which is incredibly charitable given that the democrats absolutely do not even come close to reducing their support for ICE to 50% of the GOP.)
Someone replies with “they managed to do it with a lot less shooting of people and a lot less assaulting of people unwarranted”. (Apparently assaulting people is cool if you have a warrant??)
I tell them exactly what you’d expect. “So you’re not opposed to fascism as long as it minimizes shootings and ICE only assaults people when they have a warrant?”
Look at this reply of theirs:
Respect. Proceduralism. Fascism is cool with me if it’s a few notches below the current fever-pitch level. Even though the dems have been willing collaborators in walking this path every step of the way, it’s pretty silly to both sides the issue (no I will not elaborate). There are only two options: ICE and open borders.
…this is exactly what I’m talking about when I say that progressives are worse to deal with than conservatives. I know that there’s this trope about MAGA supporters being brainwashed and it’s not untrue but if anyone can explain to me how you can call yourself antifascist and “pretty heavily anti-ICE” while defending the party that increases ICE funding every time they get into power then I’d love to hear it because as far as I can tell if you’re acting like ICE has always existed, that it’s a necessity, and that you’re opposed to ICE while defending it and defending your support of the party that throws its full weight behind ICE then how is that not being so deep in the trashcan of ideology that your roommate is Oscar the Grouch?
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“they managed to do it with a lot less shooting of people and a lot less assaulting of people unwarranted”.
translation: “assaulting people is fine when they’re not white and shooting people is fine when it’s not in my back yard”
Literally NIMBY fascists
The worst crime trump did to them was ruin the vibes for brunch. Libs gotta get the guillotine.
solid lib framing critique of the structure as “both sides”. until they can understand the critique is republicans and democrats are on one side playing a good cop/bad cop routine to confuse resistance and continue serving highly concentrated wealth, they are impossible to reach.
there is no “both sides” going on. there is one side and it has been running the table in america for centuries.
If it helps remember that their ideology will seem like an impenetrable wall until it actually starts to fall. It’s about leverage. But until they hit that tipping point this is what they get up to. They will create complex arguments, seeming to account for all the moving pieces except the overarching role capitalism plays in their equations. For god’s sake these people will invent new flavors of capitalism just to get mad at to prevent admitting they hate capitalism. It’s like dealing with a toddler’s logic it’s infuriating. They’re doomed to only seeing what they decode from reality with their liberal cypher. Mind melting to deal with.
It really is. I’ve been at this for a long time and I tend to go yell at the libs to blow off steam. Idk if that’s actually a good thing or not but it’s an outlet and maybe it contributes to something positive in some small way. But it’s really just me yelling into the (political) void so I can have a pressure release valve - I’m not gonna pretend like it’s some noble crusade.
It’s wild that I called it and said that they’d vote for the 50% holocaust and directly after they’re saying “it’s a spectrum” and “the democrats are a few notches below.” I swear they don’t actually engage with the substance of an argument before they trot out their talking points because I’d be mortified to make an argument like that right after a comment with that 50% line.
They are goosestepping all the way to hell.
I swear they don’t actually engage with the substance of an argument before they trot out their talking points because I’d be mortified to make an argument like that right after a comment with that 50% line.
In this way they’re just like the chuds. You test their intellectual flexibility and the moment you approach one of their red lines they lock up and the same dogmatic rigidity they associate with “leftist idealism” or “conservative fearmongering” rears its head. (The “extremes” their horseshoe theorizing built for them)
They’re walking around with thought-terminating cliches pressed to their heads like handguns.
Wait, fuck, I think I got a mental image for chud/lib debate: it’s two clowns with guns pointed at themselves threatening the other with taking themselves out and the leftist watches in horror from the side
I don’t know if you or I should feel the need to yell at these clowns but I do feel that they should be yelled at. Like these are distinct yet parallel thoughts in my head. Saying the vibes are fucked is underselling it these days so it’s good to air these things out.
I don’t know if you or I should feel the need to yell at these clowns but I do feel that they should be yelled at.
I guess I’m lucky in that I don’t feel the need to do it so much as I do it recreationally. It’s only when these brainworms encroach on a space that isn’t for this that I actually feel the need to act.
Maybe I’m reasoning backwards and maybe it’s just me justifying it to myself but I do think that plenty of my political development, especially in the early days, came from people yelling at me lol. I am obstinate though.
These days I try to be a bit purposeful about it and I poison the well by saying things like “when the democrats line up to vote for ICE funding ‘with significant concessions from the Trump administration’ just remember that moment for the next time an ICE agent murders someone in cold blood and remember that CECOT will remain open because of this.” or “You sleepwalking through politics got you to this moment and the minute that the next democrat president is elected you’re gonna be so quick to go back to brunch that you won’t even notice them increasing ICE funding as the arrest numbers outdo Trump’s record and then, when the next republican president comes into power, you’re gonna act confused about how things deteriorated so much that you can almost look back on the Trump era with nostalgia.”
I doubt they’ll actually internalize it but maybe, just maybe, there’s gonna be a twinge in their conscience and it will nudge them slightly to the left because some internet stranger accurately predicted exactly what would come to pass.
The only way we will find out their tipping point is if we keep applying pressure. Didn’t Zhou Enlai say that the verdict was still out on whether the French Revolution was successful? Who knows what good yelling at these clowns will be in the grand tally of things but pressure release valves are great. And yeah I know deep down in my bones that somebody should be saying something that isn’t more of what liberals say. If for no-one other than ourselves, it’s nice that their narrative however dominant is not the sole narrative. So keep going.
I swear they don’t actually engage with the substance of an argument before they trot out their talking points
It always helps to remember theres a 90% chance that the person you are dealing with isn’t literate.
I’ve been exactly where you are. Idk what the solution is but you’re not alone
Something something moderate wing of fascism.
Okay but can they at least live up to the name and be a bit moderate about it??
I mentioned giancarlo Esposito turbo lib commenting on how it’s time for revolution but of course he mentioned Russia and Iran before the US. And my sous chef immediately got all mad and told me to ask our iranian coworker about “the 20k people they just killed”
I get shut up talking about “politics” so i can’t even be like “yeah there’s a million gusanos in Miami who will tell you Fidel is still starving the country who don’t know the fuck what they’re talking about but sure Iranian expats are different i guess”
Mf didnt even mention Israel ffs.
Of course my sous chef did not react positively to “you believe the numbers from the same entities who have been lying to you about gaza”
The cognitive dissonance it must take to claim that you’re antifascist but then excuse actual fascism because “at least they’re respectable about it” must be studied in-depth.
“Fascism” doesn’t mean anything to them. It just means “bad guy.” They aren’t bad guys, they are good guys, so they don’t like bad guys. That’s it. It’s a child’s understanding of the world.
Harry Potterism or StarWars Syndrome
/Pol/ Potterism
It just means “bad guy.”
You give them too much credit. Most of the time it just means
They don’t care if Obama is a fascist, as long as he’s polite about it. Hence that user saying:
At least a modicum more respectable in their behavior
Anti fascism is just a cool label for them to wear that doesn’t have a real meaning to them.
It’s like the final boss of whatever curse we unlocked by whitewashing the crimes of the Wehrmacht in order to staff West Germany/NATO, this is that exact imperial boomerang ricocheting off our domes right now
“Im pretty heavily Schutzstaffel too, im just pointing out that its a bit silly to both sides. The SS was primarily made worse under Himmler, there was a time however before this that they were a bit respectable in their behavior and procedure under Julius Schreck”Also “Open Borders” like the EU, like Border control is something that has existed since the sumerians.
Libs that are as bad Maga when it comes to doing criticism of their leaders, they either make up a fake reality when things were good or they accuse you of having a bias against their leaders
Wtf is this person referring to with “open borders like the EU”? Never heard of Frontex? Never seen pictures of the drowned children on the shores of the mediterranean?
They mean open borders between what they perceive as white and culturally harmonious states through schengen. Unlike Mexico and the US which is according to them barbarism vs civilisation.
The borders have only ever been “open” for the bougies and petty bougies though. The border system within the EU is such horrific bs that it’s hard to describe.
And personally don’t know anyone who has been able to cross a border without passport checks (supposedly those aren’t needed, in reality they are) and if you are a migrant within this system without papers you get incarcerated into the country you are in with literally no rights and no way to get out.
You are right. It’s an extremely racist system not dissimilar to the US and in some ways maybe worse.
Unlike Mexico and the US which is according to them barbarism vs civilisation.
which, to be fair, it is, just not the way they think
“Who built the cages, Joe?”
Take heart! A formerly maga family member, while not having reached the stage of “voting isn’t going to help us,” has gone from fawning over billionaires to “there’s no such thing as a good billionaire.”
My mental health improved greatly when I internalized the fact that most people are really stupid on most subjects
What’s fun about Politics is the dumb people think they can spout an opinion when if it was any other field they would keep their mouth shut…
Libs are meant to be subjugated and used for political aims. Convincing them into cooperation is nice as a common courtesy but it’s like a parent trying to argue with their toddler that oreos aren’t a good breakfast, or like a lion giving a powerpoint to sheep about the benefits of being eaten.
Were you born with Capital in your hands? I know most of us weren’t. Viewing libs as fundamentally children is counter-productive to any political project that extends beyond being smug at how you supposedly stand above the herd.
Obligatory: https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
Were you born with Capital in your hands?
I mean lol….
Where do you think i got this big brain
It was snarky of me but in response to that part I said that they are probably older than DHS, and thus ICE and CBP. Then I asked if they remember how the US ever managed to survive this era of open border policy for the majority of its existence.
Point being that if someone is gonna be real disingenuous with me then I’m comfortable matching their energy and calling them out on their ahistorical take while using their own framing against them - either they eat shit and they admit that the US survived just fine without DHS (and that the dichotomy between open borders and the existence of ICE is completely false) or they agree with their initial premise and acknowledge that the US both had an open borders policy for most of its existence (lol) and that it survived just fine, thus undermining their initial premise in defence of the “necessity” of ICE.
Either way, they’re completely snookered in their argument.
Usually with this sort of gambit they are at least vaguely aware of the jaws closing in around them and they shift to insults or special pleading or redefining words but you’d be surprised at how common it is for them to double down and argue that the US had open borders or that it only worked became of some imaginary cause, like the New Deal or low housing prices or some shit. They usually go quiet when I hit back with “And what about before FDR?” or something like that. (Obviously this is just an example but it’s fun to respond to ahistorical, logically inconsistent takes like that by agreeing with the premise and doing a little judo with it. Idk if it’s any more effective than just yelling at them or quoting historical facts at them but I do feel like it might be.)
Good work, the person you were directly replying to may be hopeless but with any luck there was a curious observer reading what you wrote and saying to themselves … “you know this person might be onto something…”
Doubt that’s your intent… and I certainly don’t claim such a thing has value in and of itself, but if you’re blowing off steam anyway and a few seeds happen to fall out of your pocket and take root, maybe that’s OK.
Exactly that. I have held to the idea that online debates are a spectator sport - you’re hardly ever going to convince the person you’re replying to but if anyone happens to be reading the thread and you put forward a good argument then you’re much more likely to convince them.
(Although there’s no quantifying that so it could be pure cope too hahaha)
If it’s cope, I share it… having been on either side of that dynamic myself many times over. I lack the time for such exercises anymore… though I do keep an eye on my local subreddit and I gotta say, I’ve seldom been as tempted to get in there and start agitating as in the past week. Soooo many libs that need a-scratchin.
Cohesive personal identities
🥰
My tactic with working with liberals is to ignore them as much as possible and just see how they change their mind whenever a progressive movement is too large to ignore. It’s infuriating to interact with them but it’s funny to watch them change their position after a successful campaign.
I like this angle.
You know, sometimes when a progressive Yankee starts defending the most disgusting things I’ll really lean into it and say shit like “As a staunch opponent of the United States who believes that the world can only ever truly be free once the US is destroyed, I appreciate your efforts in defending ICE because it’s the most effective way to push your country into civil war and thus its eventual destruction so I want to thank you for all your efforts and I wish you the best of luck.”
I’m not sure what they make of a reply like that because I think it throws them off balance. They probably just assume that it’s a bit but, in all honesty, there’s a lot of truth to it. I don’t actually want to see the US descend into civil war because odds are it will turn fascist and it will grind a whole lot of people up in the death machine in the process but also it feels impossible to reason with these people and maybe me cheering on their efforts because I’m eager to see the destruction of the US will jolt them out of it and make them reflect on what they’re arguing for?
I don’t think people fully appreciate just how cooked we are. It’s American exceptionalism at its worst. Civil war only happens to the uncivilized brown masses.
The obstinate refusal of the liberals to acknowledge reality is a big part of this. They think institutions can protect them. America is fundamentally good, and all this nastiness will eventually blow over, once that awful Trump guy is gone. Marvel brain.
The thing is structurally unstable. Its completely fractured. It’s a tree rotten and hollow but appearing intact from the outside. You can see the larval holes in the bark but only if you know how to look.
Ironically civil war is the best outcome, probably. The alternative is a world war with nukes
To be honest I feel like no words can really change a liberal mind, but maybe I’m wrong and just bad at communicating with them. I think their beliefs are created almost entirely by what the government and media deem ‘acceptable’ and our views are usually just too far away from those boundaries. One of the only times I’ve really seen liberals change their minds was when there were massive protests against the genocide in Palestine because it basically signalled that tho pro Palestinian position is the popular position instead of what the media tried to tell us.
Other times are very specific to my personal work so I can’t say too much on it but the change in view basically happened whenever there was a majority vote for a progressive result. The liberals could read the room before the voting took place and didn’t even dare to vote against even though they were against in every previous discussion where they thought they held the majority position. Now they act like they were never against and are actually somewhat helpful on the subject.
Regarding ICE I think liberals have to actually see that the majority of people do want to abolish ICE before they will take over that position themselves.
