Anonymous A started this discussion 3 months ago#129,943
The Republicans are liberal, but what are the Democrats today?
The right-wing talking heads like to call them communists, but the democrats have been doing everything they can to avoid benefiting the working class. When they do present something that looks beneficial to the working class it's almost always taxing the same workers to pay for it, or any gains are diluted from other handouts to the parasitic class that weighs workers down enough to cancel out any real gain.
The democrats will never side with the working class, because any change to give the working class the value they produce will disproportionately help men (directly, even though women control most consumer spending) and that is a non-starter in a party built on feminist idpol.
So what are they? "Woke" politics is vague. Do they match any actual political ideology identified by political scientists?
DarkDude joined in and replied with this 3 months ago, 16 minutes later[^][v]#1,395,625
The democrats don’t call themselves woke though. Originally, woke originated as an African American slang term in the 1930s to refer to awareness of racial prejudice. The right just started using woke as an insult for the same reason they started using anti fascist as an insult. You know, like those men who landed on the beaches of Normandy in the 1940s who were aware of Hitler’s racial prejudice against Jews and fought against fascism. Just a bunch of woke anti fascists.
But if you’re asking what the democrats are, they’re center to center left.
DarkDude double-posted this 3 months ago, 2 minutes later, 19 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,395,626
Also, the Democratic Party in the US is center left, not far left by international standards. In other democracies, like in Japan and in France, it’s not very uncommon that there are actual communist or actual socialist parties that hold seats in government.
> The democrats don’t call themselves woke though.
Not anymore, yes, my point is that this terminology doesn't tell us what the ideology is fundamentally. It communicates some policy positions, but not the underlying ethics.
> Originally, woke originated as an African American slang term in the 1930s to refer to awareness of racial prejudice. The right just started using woke as an insult for the same reason they started using anti fascist as an insult.
They started using it because there was a time when young democrats were using woke unironically. For antifa, calling yourself the good guys doesn't mean you're the good guys. North Korea officially calls themselves democratic, does that mean critics of the country are antidemocratic?
> You know, like those men who landed on the beaches of Normandy in the 1940s who were aware of Hitler’s racial prejudice against Jews and fought against fascism. Just a bunch of woke anti fascists.
Those men believed that marriage was between a man and a woman, and when they liberated the concentration camps didn't free the LGBT prisoners, instead they moved them to prisons.
The same soldiers believed in national borders, not in allowing anyone to freely enter the US.
And the same men believed in a liberal capitalist order, while retaining conservative values at home.
You don't understand the culture of the time if you actually think they would agree with anything happening today.
> But if you’re asking what the democrats are, they’re center to center left.
These are ill-defined terms, you can't reduce politics down to a one-dimensional metric. There are hundreds of political ideologies that don't fit on that spectrum, or you would end up with many very different ideologies that all end up being called center despite their important differences.
DarkDude replied with this 3 months ago, 14 minutes later, 42 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,395,630
@previous (A)
1. The time when people were still using woke unironically was during the civil rights movement.
2. Yeah, that would be stupid to call someone who’s against the North Korean government anti democratic, which is why nobody calls people who are against the North Korean government anti democratic. But democracy is good, fascism is bad, being anti democratic is bad, being anti fascist is good, because fascism is an anti democratic totalitarian political ideology which is incompatible with basic fundamental democratic values like freedom of expression. So calling someone "anti fascist" as an insult is stupid. If someone is anti democratic, just call them anti democratic.
3. The Nazis killed gay people. I know that the US didn’t treat gay people well, but between being in prison and being in a death camp, I’m pretty sure the Nazis were still the bad guys in that situation.
> 1. The time when people were still using woke unironically was during the civil rights movement.
I knew people talking like that in the 2010s.
> 2. Yeah, that would be stupid to call someone who’s against the North Korean government anti democratic, which is why nobody calls people who are against the North Korean government anti democratic. But democracy is good, fascism is bad, being anti democratic is bad, being anti fascist is good, because fascism is an anti democratic totalitarian political ideology which is incompatible with basic fundamental democratic values like freedom of expression. So calling someone "anti fascist" as an insult is stupid. If someone is anti democratic, just call them anti democratic.
They aren't using antifascist as an insult, they are using "antifa" the shortened name that became the branding for a decentralized violent street gang to refer to that group.
And there are people who say they are against the "Democratic People's Republic of North Korea", but to their credit the North Korean leadership doesn't go on TV and say "you're anti-democratic republics?" as a gotcha.
> 3. The Nazis killed gay people. I know that the US didn’t treat gay people well, but between being in prison and being in a death camp, I’m pretty sure the Nazis were still the bad guys in that situation.
Now you're acting like I said the Nazis were the good guys, but that's not what I said.
You said the people who stormed Normandy and liberated europe were "antifa", but their ideology would get them labeled as Nazis today by antifa.
You recognize who the good guys were in WW2, and yet you're ideology would label them Nazis today despite the fact that they were the ones who actually defeated the Nazis.
DarkDude joined in and replied with this 3 months ago, 8 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,395,660
@previous (A)
I feel like you make arguments dishonestly. I think as a black guy, I can understand that if the year was 1940, I’d rather live in America than in Germany, but that if the year was 1940, I’d have more freedom in Canada than the United States. Good and evil isn’t binary.
DarkDude double-posted this 3 months ago, 3 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,395,661
I mean, as an example of how dishonest that argument is, what you’re saying essentially, that if I think being homophobic is bad and I’m against Nazism, I can’t be right because homophobic people fought the Nazis, that would be like saying, well if you’re against Nazism, so was Jospeh Stalin, therefore if you’re against the Nazis you have to be okay with Marxist Leninism.
Anonymous F joined in and replied with this 3 months ago, 8 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,395,662
@1,395,655 (A)
I suspect this is a troll but I see similar comments elsewhere online so its worth responding to. You say that Americans fighting in WW2 would be considered "Nazis" today, but saying that is doing what fascists and fascist sympathizers love doing these days, taking a term or phrase used by their ideological adversaries and twist them to mean something else in an effort to dilute its impact. People don't use "Nazi" and "fascist" as an umbrella term to mean "people I don't like". They use them to refer to people with beliefs similar to Nazis and fascists. Being racist isn't inherently fascist. They would certainly be called racist and homophobic shitbags today, but that is not equivalent to fascist on its own.
DarkDude double-posted this 3 months ago, 1 minute later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,395,666
And the Americans in 1945 definitely knew they didn’t have the same beliefs as the people they just defeated who killed almost half a million Americans.
DarkDude double-posted this 3 months ago, 2 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,395,673
I said fascism is an anti democratic political ideology that’s incompatible with freedom of expression. The United States is a democracy. Are you stupid or something?
If you're siding with antifa, then it would imply you share their views.
The people antifa calls Nazis in every video is to the left of that type of man. The soldiers that came back home after putting gay people into prisons created the 50s culture. Someone like that would be the main target of an antifa untermenschenmob
DarkDude double-posted this 3 months ago, 6 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,395,839
You’re still using that stupid fallacy of "oh well if the nazis were bad you have to think everything Americans were doing was good." Weren’t white Americans setting black Americans on fire and hanging black people from trees in the 1950s? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad democracy won over fascism, but you’ve gotta be pretty dim witted if you actually think the moral standard of Americans in the 1940s and 1950s is something we should live by today. Like I’m pretty sure most people can agree for example, putting Japanese Americans who were natural born citizens in camps just because they were ethnically Japanese was a little bit insane and maybe we shouldn’t do stuff like that.
Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU joined in and replied with this 3 months ago, 4 hours later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,395,884
I don't think any countries fought in ww2 because they wanted to defend the Jews. Maybe some individual soldiers bought the propaganda that they were fighting evil, but really it was all just realpolitik.
> You’re still using that stupid fallacy of "oh well if the nazis were bad you have to think everything Americans were doing was good."
You're using quotes, but I also didn't say this. Which makes it another strawman.
You said "those men who landed on the beaches of Normandy in the 1940s" were antifa, but those very people would be called Nazis by anyone who labels themselves antifa today.
DarkDude replied with this 3 months ago, 1 minute later, 3 days after the original post[^][v]#1,396,281
@previous (A)
Well there are two definitions of the word stupid, one is a stupid person, the other is you. Why? Because I started using the world stupid that way, therefore you’re stupid.
The first is self-explanatory, those men were anti-fascist because they were literally fighting fascism. You can look up the prefix "anti" and the noun "fascist" in any dictionary to confirm that.
The second is what a decentralized group calls themselves, and you'll have to take it up with them if you don't like the name. Anyone using that label would readily tell you that they were against you if you started espousing beliefs that lined up with the worldview of an infantryman of WW2.
DarkDude triple-posted this 3 months ago, 1 minute later, 3 days after the original post[^][v]#1,396,299
Unless you mean that the first definition is "opposed to fascism" and the second definition is "extreme right-wing authoritarianism" in which case, you should be against all forms of authoritarianism.
DarkDude replied with this 3 months ago, 1 minute later, 3 days after the original post[^][v]#1,396,302
@previous (A)
What is wrong with you? You know what I’m talking about, I’m not going to explain what we’re arguing about like I’m supposed to believe you’re actually so stupid you forgot. Just admit you were wrong instead of playing stupid games.
You said I was trying to make people "believe in some alternate version of history" because of my definition of anti-fascist. My definition was fighting fascists made them anti fascist. Then you responded that the actual definition is "as an adjective: opposed to fascism".
DarkDude double-posted this 3 months ago, 1 minute later, 3 days after the original post[^][v]#1,396,305
There’s a correct definition, and if you use another definition, you’re using the wrong definition, because you’re wrong, and that’s the end of the story.
DarkDude replied with this 3 months ago, 2 minutes later, 3 days after the original post[^][v]#1,396,307
@previous (A)
You’re not being clever. In order to say that you have to both know that your argument is bullshit, know that I know your argument is bullshit, but want to twist it in your favor anyway. I know what you’re doing already.