#liberal fascism

[mightyflamethrower]

#Too White #liberal fascism #liberal extremists

[thatwritererinoriordan]

#if books could kill podcast #if books could kill #liberal fascism #Jonah Goldberg #podcasts #Spotify

[ahaura]

im sure its been said already but as the election draws near more and more liberals will come out of the woodwork to shame people with a conscience to give away their vote to the democrats for free. i'm already seeing posts saying "why aren't people more concerned about a trump presidency?" you want to know why? it's because people already know he's bad. everyone already knows what he is and what he's done and what he'll do. there's nothing to discuss. he's a racist despotic worm of a man. there's nothing else to say.

biden is currently president. the genocide is happening under his watch. he's the one funding isra*l and arming them; he's sidestepped congress more than once to give them weapons. by oct. 27, the biden administration already knew that "Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets." the state department/biden have engaged in atrocity propaganda, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the death toll recorded by the gaza health ministry, and so on. the united states is currently in the process of trying to pin the "war in gaza" on netanyahu (see sen. schumer's speech) after months of backing blatant genocide as a means to act as if they're "doing something" about the genocide (Instead of, say, threatening to cut off all aid to israel with the condition that all hostilities in gaza, the west bank, and occupied jerusalem are halted immediately and permanently, allowing palestinians freedom to travel, allowing aid into gaza, etc etc etc.)

the long and short of it is that liberals view their own lives as being worth more than palestinians'. that's it. they'll vote for another 4 years of the guy ushering in genocide and supporting apartheid + settler colonialism because he isn't outright attacking them (despite various laws and rulings happening both at the supreme court level and at the local level all over the country that will endanger people). they'll settle for the illusion of safety and security and shame anyone with a conscience and accuse them of "supporting the republicans" when in an actual democracy you would be able to use your vote as leverage to extract concessions from those who want to be elected. that's how it's supposed to fucking work.

democrats are not owed people's vote. if biden loses, it will be biden's fault; it will be his campaign's fault; it will be the democrats' fault. trump is bad; the republicans are bad. we already know this. this is not an endorsement of either. but if democrats are too cowardly and feckless and servile to the motivations of the american empire and never do anything for their constituents then why the fuck should anyone vote for them. you want to get mad at someone, why don't you do something useful and stop worrying about team-sports with a purely selfish basis and start hounding the people in power who are supposed to serve you, the voter.

#i think i already said this and frankly idc #uspol #📁.zip #to me personally it's abhorrent and vile to tell palestinians 'biden is facilitating the murder of your people culture and history but you #still have to vote for him!!1' like how is that not unbelievably callous and ghoulish #frankly speaking. a lot of this 'you should be concerned about trump' is going to turn into #blaming palestinians and arabs and muslims and anyone remotely with a conscience for biden's loss #instead of doing something productive like pushing for people in power to do something they'll nitpick and belittle #and tell palestinians + arabs and muslims + everyone who understands that genocide is bad that they SHOULD #settle for a decrepit genocidal monstrous freak who is CURRENTLY facilitating genocide because #it makes THEM feel better and they aren't personally threatened (yet) by the guy currently in power #any and all 'you're not taking trump seriously' comments should be met with extreme skepticism #because i promise i PROMISE that the vast majority of people unhappy with biden are not going to turn around and vote for trump #and if they do? well guess what THAT'S BIDEN'S FAULT! nevermind the vote uncommitted campaign that was very successful and #will be replicated in the near future. but liberals only care about asthetics and superficial and not #about real material change which is why they'll dress up their callousness and racism in a 'you hate gay people if you dont vote for biden' #like this country is already going to shit we are rapidly descending into fascism and i dont see biden doing anything to even remotely #challenge it do you???? once agian. NOT an endorsement of the republican party but my GOD when the 'lesser evil' #is DOING the evil or normalizing the evil then you cannot settle for 'the lesser'! end of story.

[tomorrowusa]

Don't risk a rerun of the 2000 election.

In the first presidential election of the 21st century many deluded progressives voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.

Their foolishness gave us eight years of George W. Bush who plagued the country with two recessions (including the Great Recession) and two wars (one totally unnecessary and one which could have been avoided if he heeded an intelligence brief 5 weeks before 9/11).

Oh yeah, Dubya also appointed one conservative and one batshit crazy reactionary to the US Supreme Court. Roberts and Alito are still there.

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post offers some thoughts.

Why leftists should work their hearts out for Biden in 2024

Ask a Democrat with a long memory what the numbers 97,488 and 537 represent, and their face will twist into a grimace. The first is the number of votes Ralph Nader received in Florida in 2000 as the nominee of the Green Party; the second is the margin by which George W. Bush was eventually certified the winner of the state, handing him the White House. Now, with President Biden gearing up for reelection, talk of a spoiler candidate from the left is again in the air. That’s unfortunate, because here’s the truth: The past 2½ years under Biden have been a triumph for progressivism, even if it’s not in most people’s interest to admit it. This was not what most people expected from Biden, who ran as a relative moderate in the 2020 Democratic primary. His nomination was a victory for pragmatism with its eyes directed toward the center. But today, no one can honestly deny that Biden is the most progressive president since at least Lyndon B. Johnson. His judicial appointments are more diverse than those of any of his predecessors. He has directed more resources to combating climate change than any other president. Notwithstanding the opposition from the Supreme Court, his administration has moved aggressively to forgive and restructure student loans.

Three years ago the economy was in horrible shape because of Trump's mishandling of the pandemic. Now unemployment is steadily below 4%, job creation continues to exceed expectations, and wages are rising as unions gain strength. The post-pandemic, post-Afghan War inflation rate has receded to near normal levels; people in the 1970s would have sold their souls for a 3.2% (and dropping) inflation rate. And many of the effects of "Bidenomics" have yet to kick in.

And in a story that is criminally underappreciated, his administration’s policy reaction to the covid-induced recession of 2020 was revolutionary in precisely the ways any good leftist should favor. It embraced massive government intervention to stave off the worst economic impacts, including handing millions of families monthly checks (by expanding the child tax credit), giving all kids in public schools free meals, boosting unemployment insurance and extending health coverage to millions.

It worked. While inflation rose (as it did worldwide), the economy’s recovery has been blisteringly fast. It took more than six years for employment rates to return to what they were before the Great Recession hit in 2008, but we surpassed January 2020 jobs levels by the spring of 2022 — and have kept adding jobs ever since. To the idealistic leftist, that might feel like both old news and a partial victory at best. What about everything supporters of Bernie Sanders have found so thrilling about the Vermont senator’s vision of the future, from universal health care to free college? It’s true Biden was never going to deliver that, but to be honest, neither would Sanders had he been elected president. And that brings me to the heart of how people on the left ought to think about Biden and his reelection.

Biden has gotten things done. The US economy is doing better than those of almost every other advanced industrialized country.

Our rivals China and Russia are both worse off than they were three years ago. And NATO is not just united, it's growing.

Sadly, we still need to deal with a far right MAGA cult at home who would wreck the country just to get its own way.

Biden may be elderly and unexciting, but that is one of the reasons he won in 2020. Many people just wanted an end to the daily drama of Trump's capricious and incompetent rule by tweet. And a good portion of those people live in places that count greatly in elections – suburbs and exurbs.

Superhero films seem to be slipping in popularity. Hopefully that's a sign that voters are less likely to embrace self-appointed political messiahs to save them from themselves.

Good governance is a steady process – not a collection of magic tricks. Experienced and competent individuals who are not too far removed from the lives of the people they represent are the best people to have in government.

Paul Waldman concludes his column speaking from the heart as a liberal...

I’ve been in and around politics for many years, and even among liberals, I’ve almost always been one of the most liberal people in the room. Yet only since Biden’s election have I realized that I will probably never see a president as liberal as I’d like. It’s not an easy idea to make peace with. But it suggests a different way of thinking about elections — as one necessary step in a long, difficult process. The further you are to the left, the more important Biden’s reelection ought to be to you. It might require emotional (and policy) compromise, but for now, it’s also the most important tool you have to achieve progressive ends.

Exactly. Rightwingers take the long view. It took them 49 years but they eventually got Roe v. Wade overturned. To succeed, we need to look upon politics as an extended marathon rather as one short sprint.

Republicans may currently be bickering, but they will most likely unite behind whichever anti-abortion extremist they nominate.

It's necessary to get the word out now that the only way to defeat climate-denying, abortion-restricting, assault weapon-loving, race-baiting, homophobic Republicans is to vote Democratic.

#paul waldman #liberalism #election 2000 #election 2024 #joe biden #third parties #vote blue no matter who #donald trump #dumpster fire #trumpster fire #fascism vs. democracy #nra republicans #abortion #climate change #lgbtq+ rights #race-baiting #take the political long view #phil hands

[hussyknee]

History isn't a disparate collection of stories from long ago. It's the necessary context for the present moment and the forecast for the future. All histories are intertwined, and the narratives of power and privilege, oppression and resistance, adversity and triumph are as constant in their patterns as the laws of physics.

#free palestine #black lives matter #landback #civil rights movement #war on terror #fascism #imperialism #colonization #genocide #colonialism #indigenous sovereignty #climate change #military industrial complex #current events #labour rights #trans genocide #eugenics #this describes literally every political struggle going on right now #and western leftists and liberals are like pikachu face and handwringing every damn time and I AM TIRED #you dont even need to know the entire history of palestine and israel #you just need to understand how colonization and ethnic cleansing and fascism WORKS #you are morally obliged to actively seek education and have a unequivocal stances against violation and annihilation #knee of huss

[itscuntingseason]

there are fascists, 'free market' liberals, kids who call you homophobic slurs and literal race supremacists in disco elysium, and yet, the worst character to talk to is this fucking guy.

#text #sunday friend #charles villedrouin #kim kitsuragi #harry du bois #liberalism? advanced race theory? fascism? misogyny? #no. the worst thing you can be in disco elysium is a centrist. #'are you sure you're done talking to me? this is the last time you'll see me' thank fucking god #disco elysium

[askinnyblackman]

kinda fucked up how quickly the united states is descending into christofascism and i just gotta like. go to work

#joe biden is not the guy to fight fascism #joe biden is everything that got us to this point #liberals dni

[decolonize-the-left]

When 3 in 4 (74%) adults in the U.S. connected the gas, electricity, phone or internet in a new home, ICE was able to automatically learn their new address. Almost all of that has been done warrantlessly and in secret.

Dated May, 10, 2022 a report published by Georgetown Law showed how invasive ICE reaches. Obtained through 200 FOIA requests, the reports says ICE has tracked civilians using utilities, drivers licenses, facial recognition, and even used vulnerable unaccompanied minors being held in detention to find more leads (specifically, searching for more of their family members without documentation) . And they do so without warrants or even informing state legislators. Even companies and corporations have shared info with with ICE without their knowledge or consent.

"Most congressional leaders did not learn about ICE face recognition scans of DMV photos until The Washington Post ran an exposé on the practice, reporting on records obtained by the Center on Privacy & Technology. This exposé ran in 2019, over a decade after ICE penned its first known face recognition contract in 2008 for access to the Rhode Island driver database.

The fact that ICE was conducting face recognition scans on driver’s license photos came as a shock to senior lawmakers – even those with the greatest insight into DHS activities. On learning of the face scans, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the longtime chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, denounced the practice as “a massive, unwarranted intrusion into the privacy rights of Americans by the federal government, done secretly and without authorization by law.” ICE’s surveillance initiatives have regularly flown under Congress’ radar. While a few political leaders have pressed ICE in oversight letters and used appropriations riders to end the most aggressive of ICE’s actions, to date there has not been one full congressional hearing or Government Accountability Office (GAO) report focused on ICE surveillance."

Further, even when states become aware and make moves to block ICE from having this kind of access they just use a different door.

 In Washington, Governor Jay Inslee enacted a statewide policy to limit state agency cooperation with ICE only to discover that state licensing officials were routinely violating that policy. When state officials cut off ICE’s access to a state-run driver database, previously unseen records show that DHS searches of a separate network of driver data – one not operated by the state – nearly doubled. In Oregon, soon after lawmakers passed a law cutting off state data disclosures to ICE, the Oregon DMV signed agreements to sell its driver’s license records to Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the two primary data brokers that sell ICE access to driver information."

This is a HUGE breach of privacy and goes as far back as 2008 when ICE used facial recognition in Rhode Island under the Bush administration.

The article also discusses the potential danger this has to cause such a deep mistrust in government that it could cause folks to deny or reject state services to avoid being put in an ICE database or otherwise have their data used without knowledge or consent.

Likewise the report also has a section that advises how this privacy could be restored and corrected by Congress. Which means signal boost this. Congress was made aware of these breaches in 2019 and as of yet have done nothing to stop ICE or hold them accountable.

Which means it's on us to hold them accountable because once again the folks in Congress have shown they lack the ambition and initiative.

#ICE #Abolish ICE #current events #biden #democrats #liberals #immigration #chinga la migra #acab #leftists #american #fascism #capitalism #xenophobia #congress #senate #usa #usa politics #defund ice #joe biden #obama #bush #invasion of privacy #detention center #child support #welfare #healthcare #housing #progress #privacy law

[politijohn]

Source

Liberalism rearing its ugly head, yet again. Hillary Clinton style.

#politics #us politics #Hillary Clinton #liberalism #fascism #Italy #elections #Europe #world affairs #government #current events #news

[kafkasapartment]

“The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.”

“Freedom and Government” - Bertrand Russell

#quotes #history #historia #government #fascism #wisdom #democracy #liberalism #philosophy

[mightyflamethrower]

#political humor #executive dysfunction #liberal fascism #liberal hypocrisy

[sapphixxx]

Signalis, Authority, and History

There's a level of nuance to how Signalis presents the violence of the authority of the nation that doesn't call attention to itself but which I really appreciate. Which is basically just, all the officers and cops and spies who make life hell for people like the Gestalt mine workers, Ariane, and the Itou family--we get little glimpses into who they are in Adler and Kolibri's diaries and despite the propaganda and the authoritative tone they take in official communications, for the most part they don't seem to actually be particularly invested in the hard line of national ideology. They uphold it though, viciously, both because things were worse under imperial rule (we don't get hard details on what it was like but it's mentioned in passing enough that I believe it) and because they're scared that if they don't they will be decommissioned and easily replaced. They are literally stamped out of a production line after all. There's a subtext of well, if I don't do it my replacement will anyway and I'm not trying to die so what's the point of rocking the boat?

I think Kolibri stands out to me most clearly on this because in communications from the block warden regarding Ariane there is emphasis put on how it is unacceptable and suspicious that she should be so interested and invested in art and literature that does not serve the purpose of furthering the goals of the nation. But we know that Kolibris themselves are bookworms, Adlers are fiends for stimulating experiences, and both get miserable FAST when deprived of art and puzzles and entertainment and hobbies. Y'know, just like anyone. Far be it from being a paragon of The Nation only interested in productive labor, we are reminded that the block warden, too, hates this shitty town and wants to transfer but is denied. They're hypocrites, but not monsters, nor brainwashed puppets of the state.

The monstrousness at play is not contained within any particular subset of evil individuals, or even an inherent universal force of evil contained in the broad notion of The Nation. There is no cosmic evil force that makes them all do these things to each other. The monstrousness is within the social systems, the mechanisms of how authority perpetuates on a structural procedural level, held in place by fear and tangible threats of violence, each link in the chain restraining the next through those threats out of fear that if they don't, then they'll be next. Regardless how many, if any, of those people in this chain are true dogmatic hardliners, they must act as such because failing to do so opens them up to danger.

Here then I think of the quote that is so prominent, "Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl", from Lovecraft's The Festival. This is not just a chilling abstract visual that conveniently evokes a mineshaft-- in Lovecraft's story, this line refers to worms which ate the decomposing bodies of wizards whose wretched souls had remained after death, complete with the terrible powers they gained through contracts with demons. Those worms inherited both their power, and also the evil. The Nation, despite having overthrown the Empire, is built on imperial technology, in particular Replikas and bioresonance. So too, then, we can imply that The Nation inherited with those things some of the monstrousness of The Empire as well. There is no end of history, nor clean break with the past, no matter how violently it may seem to be rejected. That which remains from the past--and something inevitably always does--creates the present.

This is a game that is not shy about evoking East Germany. And I think all of this provides a sophisticated picture of repressive authority that we rarely see in fiction of the English speaking world, especially in games. The year the S23 incident takes place is notably 84, but, frankly, I find this to be more compelling and illustrative than 1984 (and I'm a librarian and have taught English classes so I get to say that). Orwell, let's be honest, presents a fairly one dimensional picture of authority, where people seize power and wield it against others out of seeming mustache twirling evil or malice.

Here though we get a more humanistic view. Authority did not come from nowhere and is not wielded arbitrarily out of gleeful cruelty or mindless brainwashed allegiance. People aren't "just following orders". Individuals have rich inner lives. They make decisions, and those decisions are based in the context they're in. Even the decision to carry repressive tools of the past into the present is a decision that was made strategically with the big picture in mind. Nobody woke up and decided to be evil that day. Everyone operates on self interest, and, we must assume, an earnest desire for things to get better. Even the [spoiler] program which served as an inspirational demonstration of The Nation's power, you can imagine the chain of officers and bureaucrats who genuinely wanted the people of the nation to believe in the future, to confidently trust that everyone was working together towards something great and beautiful. And, through a long chain of those people who couldn't say "No" without being decommissioned, we ended up with something unbelievably cruel.

We get to know Adler and Kolibri and the other officers not to say well they're human too, maybe it wasn't so bad that they condemned all those people to agonizing suffering, but to remember that if we keep looking for true monsters we will not find them. There are no monsters and there are no demons. There are only people making decisions. A better world is possible. A better world, where Adler is just a paper pusher who does puzzles after work instead of signing papers to authorize torture, where Kolibris are librarians instead of spies and cops, where EULEs can gossip and play piano and ARARs can do maintenance on facilities that don't contain torture rooms, is one that would not have led to the Ariane and Elster's tragic cycle and ultimate end.

Authority and its attendant cruelty is not contained, radiating forth from The Great Revolutionary and Her Daughter, it is within the social systems of control. When those two women die, that cruelty will continue so long as those social systems continue. Like Lovecraft's worms, no matter how long dead the evil of the past is, so long as it continues to be fed upon, that evil will not only remain, but evolve into something new in the present. A better world can't be achieved through the death of the old world alone, even if violent overthrow is warranted. There is no end of history. There is no clean break from the past.

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

#Signalis #Didn't include everything because this is already very long #But there's a lot to add to this kind of reading from other former Eastern Bloc states that go beyond a kind of braindead #Simplistic Authoritarianism bad communism bad freedom good type of view common in the English speaking world #That go more into well what is authority and how does it work and how has it remained durable and violent before during and after the cold #The Romanian movie Bad Luck Banging is very good for this in expressing how things have been more similar than different #Under monarchy fascism communism and liberal democracy over the last 150 years there #replika joker voice maybe the real monster is SOCIETY #op #quality content

[communistkenobi]

been reading a lot of scholarship on anti-vaxx protests & their connections to fascism and something eternally frustrating with the literature is you have to guess whether the author means “extremist left wing views” as in “votes for liberal parties” or as in “is a communist” and 99% of the time it’s the former

#it’s like being a in a fucking playground. you guys don’t even know the terrain you’re navigating #this makes it extremely easy to do a marxist intervention into this scholarship but at the same time it’s really depressing and frustrating #good for my research bad for. well everything else #like a lot of this scholarship is like dude these protests are actually so complicated you have extremists from both sides #and they mean like new age hippies and fascists. maddening! #again that one quote about how liberalism is the left wing of fascism. been in my mind constantly as I read these things

[hussyknee]

It's amazing how the word "nuance" has been turned into a cheap coin for colonialism.

Nuance: "It makes me uncomfortable to take a moral stand against oppression and colonization so I'm going to pretend it's too fucking complicated to listen to the people who have been systemically expelled, displaced and ethnically cleansed for the last seventy years."

Someone said in a tag that "white ignorance is called objectivity and white knowledge expertise" and that is exactly what's going on here.

#free palestine #israel is a terrorist state #fascism #colonization #settler colonialism #politics #white liberals #white privilege #white supremacy #racism #palestinian genocide #imperialism #immigration

[alanshemper]

about how to pour more money into militarizing and hardening the southern border, of all things. remember when liberals cared about Trump's policy at the southern border?

#biden administration #liberalism 🤝 fascism

[yourtongzhihazel]

The lack of solidarity with workers reminds me of how every time the wages and working conditions of textile workers in the Global South is brought up as needing to be raised and how clothing prices are artificially deflated in the Global North to make profits by volume while not paying workers, the same (usually white and middle class) "progressive" Westerners who usually advocate for raising wages and salaries in the West will start screaming about how that's classist bc paying Global South workers will hurt poor people in the West who rely on fast fashion, even though the poor are not the ones feeding that industry by the billions and the idea that the Global South must be exploited to support bougie Westerners who want to live like rich capitalists (which is sadly where a lot of privileged Western leftists' "leftism" starts and ends) is disgusting.

I know 90% of it is because of all the ambient individualism. Everything has to be about me, or if not me, then my immediate community/family. At most, solidarity only extends to the border and that's it. Everyday, it gets harder and harder to deny the existence of the labor aristocracy. The good news is that many people are receptive, you just have to tear through layers and layers of built up propaganda and ideology. Agitation works, it just takes time.

#I want to have hope i really do #but my fucking gods #the asks i have been getting lately have been pure unadulterated liberalism at best and fascism apologia at worst #i fucking hate liberals