US, EU, even China and India. Regardless where you are, the economy sucks, housing is not affordable, prices are high, jobs are stagnant and class mobility is nonexistent (except maybe in China).
US, EU, even China and India. Regardless where you are, the economy sucks, housing is not affordable, prices are high, jobs are stagnant and class mobility is nonexistent (except maybe in China).
That is 100% not true. XHS often takes credit for socialist achievements that they had no hand in creating, using that to belittle American leftists, and is subsequently a complete dunce when it comes to american domestic politics. They had paragraphs of justification on why voting for Biden is the best choice, while also believing that Biden was some Machiavellian mastermind, as opposed to a senile old man herded by staffers.
Just because their takes are long and have some degree of justification and reasoning does not make them ‘deep’. XHS has only been right in so far as ‘nothing ever happens’, and as long as nothing continues to happen, they will continue to be correct. Are they correct for the right reason? Who knows! But if their reasoning for why China is doing what it is doing is the same quality as why Biden was doing what he was doing, then they are wildly and completely off base.
I wasn’t around during election season, so I can’t comment about the Biden thing in particular, though I do know my pain point with their analysis was of the American left, where I thought they were correct in a sense, but one that was somewhat myopic in nature and missed details that are easier to see on the ground here, as well as some things just aren’t said loudly via organizations’ public broadcasting.
They are good at reading books and articles particularly around international finance and then synthesizing that myriad information into a fairly cohesive whole.
However, to be a bit lib about it, they are not actually in the room where it happens. Which becomes painfully clear when I read anything they talk about that deals directly with my personal organizing experience in the U.S., within and without the Democratic party. It’s my pretty typical criticism of most journalists.
Shipwreck had their awful election takes in their other alts. They would post these massive tl;dr screeds about how Biden was a brilliant mastermind in leveraging the power of USD as a financial weapon only to end the screed with “anyways, you should vote for Biden in 2024 because he’s better for trans people.”
when the bit is good the bit is good lmfao
That’s not what I said. I said that Biden’s big gamble with raising the interest rates had exposed the weakness of the American financial capitalist system and could lead to global de-dollarization. However, they correctly bet that China (the only large economy capable of challenging them) would not be willing to take up the challenger role, and as such the US got away with it.
This position still remains completely correct, for China has only continued to defend the “free trade” against America’s protectionism. Until China has shown a willingness to abandon its IMF export-led growth strategy and turn away from the neoliberal model, I remain correct.
There is a lot of misrepresentation of my arguments as though people who don’t like what I’m saying are unwilling to discuss something complex and nuanced.
Again, didn’t even bother to understand my arguments. I said that if the American left isn’t willing to fight it to the end, then a Biden/Harris presidency is objectively better for minorities. They need more time to organize and build their strength.
I remain vincidated: Trump DOJ is looking at ways to ban transgender Americans from owning guns
The American left has no answer to that, I guarantee you that.
Having access to guns doesn’t help anyone without an organization to apply those guns. Ultimately we will, like pretty much every revolution before us, have to take the armories and rely on friendly local veterans to gain access to them. It doesn’t fundamentally matter one way or the other way. That is literally liberal thinking
You say you are taking lessons from them, but you simply aren’t. You are pretending that what they went through has some sort of bearing on what we are going through.
Again, you are still not getting my argument. First, they came for the gun rights. What do you think is going to happen next? Do you think they’re going to stop there? You aren’t thinking far enough.
Minorities are getting terrorized by ICE everywhere across America and do you see any leftist opposition? No, that’s why fascists are bold enough to roam the streets. Do you think the fascists are going to stop at deportations?
And that’s my point. The American left isn’t ready and willing to fight the fascists yet. In that case, it is objectively better to have a Democratic administration while using that time to build the strength. It isn’t so hard to understand.
No, you don’t get it.
The terror is how resistance is built, it is organizing during it that is effective here. It is built as more and more people are either directly affected, know friends and family or who are affected, or and this is the important one, fear that they will be affected by these right wing terror gangs. Those are the people that are susceptible to recruitment and your message. It’s how people like Mamdani are able to usurp traditional democratic messaging. Mamdani doesn’t happen if Trump is not in office.
When the Democrats are in charge, your rights are stripped away and the fascist gangs are just as empowered and the libs think everything is fine and that leftists are just paranoid (until of course election season where they become hyperbolic shrieks). You can only recruit from the directly affected, as the family and friends think the Democrats will help them, and there is no fear of the Republicans because the Democrats always think that they have everything under control and that they can’t possibly lose the next election, and nobody reports on the violations even though they were still already happening.
You do not build strength, you suffer de-radicalization and demobilization of the left. It’s why their strategy works so well, because people fundementally misunderstand what radicalizes people. It is not ideological potential, but actual material reality.
But we are going to talk past each other again here, as we do every time during this conversation. And you will claim victory because the reporting follows your narrative, but I am telling you, the land has never been more fertile here for the left. How this energy will eventually be applied is anybodies guess, but this organization shit was dead in the fucking water under Biden.
Tbf, I think chuddier areas tend to always have okay potential materially, but those that are most likely to already be radicalized are those that would be targets in those areas. And frankly, I’m personally not gambling on someone I see waving the Confederate flag to be a potential Young Patriot type, rather than one who asks their spouse to grab the shotgun cuz they glanced at me and saw a removed
NGL, I can see TreadOnMe’s idea due to the thesis I had during our last discussion, the type that is mostly recruited from in the modern American left is the type that I referred to, which I do think lacks the same material incentives to be radicalized, with the lower velocity of worsening conditions and the subtle cruelty of democratic administration. Many of those types are in absolute panic right now and find themselves reconsidering many things, such as gun ownership.
Edit: Thus, under modern left recruitment strategy, I think TreadOnMe’s idea is closer to reality for radicalization. Whether this is the best strategy for doing so?
I do have concerns related to the strategy and recruitment flexibility, since I do think there were potential radical bases at were underrecruited. But I wasn’t organizing at the time, believe there is some demographic distrust there, and I am still working out what I want to see in my own organization attempts, so I don’t want to judge too harshly on a problem that the solution I have yet to figure out.
I want to be clear here. I am not particularly thrilled that this is my experience of the reality on the ground. I don’t know if this is the ‘best strategy’, but I do know that attaching your wagon to the Democrats, in particular those closely associated with the DNC, is a death sentence for a radical movement. If they lose, people don’t trust you, and if they win then people tune out because the ‘grown ups are back in control’.
You don’t have to discourage your recruits from voting, but you need to emphasize to them that voting does not change the trajectory we are heading towards, hence it’s outcomes cannot affect our overall political strategy. You have to hammer this point home repeatedly whenever it comes up.
There are segments of the population that are inherently radicalized, however they are radicalized specifically in a way to distrust leftists, particularly white leftists because of their general lack of long-term political commitment, and particularly in well organized Latino and African-American (in particular recent Somali) communities. They have their own radical traditions, and it is imperative to be sympathetic to those movements and synthesize yours into their efforts, which have likely been going on for decades.
The most important thing is to say what you are going to do, and do what you said you would do. You don’t have to be clever about it.
Yeah, this is what I was thinking of lol. I’m Black, and I personally had some of that distrust that prevented me from becoming a leftist sooner. If I hadn’t studied the Panthers, no way some white person would’ve convinced me, and I’m pretty sure it still informs a lot of my ideas, particularly since we have been stabbed in the back for the thinnest slice of pie by previous labor movements. But my organizing experience has generally been that white leftists have nearly wholly given up trying to convince Black folk, at least in my area, which has several nearly purely Black communities, or Black dominant ones. That’s also ignoring the general lack of familiarity with black radicalism by white folks in orgs (Then just about all of the black members have read, or at least own and are reading damn near all the same black radical books, having decided to read them completely independently).
I just guess I find myself cynical because I don’t know how white folk finna synthesize anything when they don’t have any familiarity with half of what they’re synthesizing.
Look, you can’t continuously burn through alts and get mad when people are going off of memory instead of using your past posts as a jumping point. At this point, I don’t remember all of your alts and I can’t search through your past posts (I believe you’ve deleted a lot of them anyways).
Having rando strangers misremember what you’ve posted is a small price to pay for opsec I guess.
No worries. I was merely clarifying my position. You can, of course, choose not to believe in them. Won’t blame you or anyone though.
Not them, but I think the world needs a big shock that affects everyone for something to happen.
Neoliberalism was in part started (at the least massively helped) by Israel’s wars, I think it will play a role in whatever comes next, ie something happening.
We will see. The biggest thing that I am seeing is that we are going to get to a point in many countries where you will have a lack of elite reproduction (proletariazation), which will inevitably trigger a class crisis. Especially if they aren’t able to reproduce the liberal institutions that keeps the entire justification machine going.
There are several things coming to a head. I just don’t know which of them, if any, will actually be the X-factor.
I never took credit, I took the lessons.
I did not belittle them, I pointed out their mistakes.
Shows that you didn’t even bother to understand my arguments. I said that if the American left is not willing to fight it to the end, it would be better to have a Biden/Harris Democrat for another 4 years while accumulating strength in between.
Turns out I was right: Trump DOJ is looking at ways to ban transgender Americans from owning guns
The American left has no answer to that.
I have pointed out many times that Biden’s team made a huge gamble on raising the interest rates, which exposed the weakness of the American financial capitalist system. However, they correct bet that China - the only superpower that has the economy to challenge the dollar hegemony - would be unwilling to take on that task and challenge the global neoliberal free trade order.
This stance remains to be correct, until China shows a willingness to abandon its IMF export-led growth strategy and turn domestic consumption. Again, shows that you didn’t even bother to understand the nuances of my arguments.
With respect, I find many Americans like to see things in very black and white with little room for nuances. Maybe it’s the comic books, I don’t know.
And I explained to you, repeatedly, that the American Left does not gain strength under Biden or Harris, they are pacified. Again, you are pretending insight as if you are here, on the ground, as if the lessons you have learned didn’t come from second hand knowledge of other people’s accomplishments.
I mostly see Shipwreck as someone who doesn’t take their posting seriously. Their posting is actually pretty funny if you don’t take what they say that seriously. There’s that time when they asked whether China should nuke the US after getting nuked by the US. It’s not a serious question.
Even them being wrong about the US all the time is a lot funnier if you imagine it’s an extended bit about how people here praise China despite never actually setting foot in China nor even personally knowing Chinese people. Perhaps Shipwreck is wrong about the US in the same exact way people here are wrong about China.
If that is the case, then they should be banned because it’s a tiresome bit. I doubt it is one though.
I praise China, or more reasonably, give them the benefit of the doubt because the Chinese people I meet do like China, and in general I think their way of doing stuff makes more sense than whatever backwards ass way we do, even with their neoliberal brain worms. They at least take the idea of having companies compete in a market seriously.