We’ve reached the second iteration. There isn’t a lot separating us from the third iteration. And the material conditions were bad enough, at the latest, sometime between the first and the second iterations.
People know socialism exists. People are experiencing sufficiently bad material conditions that they want change.
People have picked up neoliberal ideas from living in a neoliberal society. These ideas give people a framework to process their material conditions so that they do not rise up in sufficient numbers. People need to learn that these ideas are part of an ideology designed to enrich the owner class at the expense of the worker class. Things will continue to get worse unless people understand that everyone needs to own their work.
This education is work that still needs to be done after hypothetically defeating the current fascist dictatorships and is probably part of what will be needed to defeat them.
I keep having this conversation with people and seeing the accelerationist line of reasoning, so I wanted to address it with a visual.
It doesn’t read much like she necessarily supports accelerationism. If she does then the post will be removed as it is a harmful ideology.
The left is growing worldwide, especially among the youth (I only included some stuff on the US, but you see similar trends in quite a few countries). Remember most people in the US would vote democrat if they voted, which while not socialism is certainly left of the republicans. They just have a major problem with believing that voting will not matter, with gerrymandering, and with anti voting schemes.
The statistics in my country aren’t quite the same in that we don’t have a geriatric fascist party, but there is a trend of polarization with people moving away from the center towards the left and the right.
Though I do agree that we really do need to be doing a better job of reaching out to people. Here in norway the left seems to be struggling because our arguments are less emotion based, because unlike the populists we aren’t throwing everything behind a small number of emotionally charged topics and we don’t have disingenuous gurus or other big social media influencers lying to kids on our behalf. We don’t do a good job of telling people the benefits of leftist policies in a way that really hits them and we don’t have enough outreach for what we say to reach them. There’s a clear bias in the news and in social media against the left which hampers us as well, both within norway but especially on international platforms.
This is an anti-accelerationist meme. I thought that was mostly self-evident, but I suppose I should have spelled that out. Any ideology can be susceptible to accelerationism. The point of this meme was that socialists seem to still arguing that the material conditions are not bad enough. They’ve been bad enough for a while and there’s not a lot of room left for them to get worse before we get death camps. edit: typo
I haven’t met a lot of socialists into accelerationism, but then I stay away from tankies
I was recently discussing this with a user who does not strike me as a tanky. I can link the comment chain to you if you want, but it’s in my comment history. It’s not so much a case of full blown accelerationism, but it’s largely the same principle. Like the material conditions do need to be bad for people to want change in the form of new ideas, but we reached that point awhile ago. edit: typo
I didn’t check out the convo, but being an accelerationist does not just require observing that different circumstances produce different societies, or that people tend to revolt when things go south, but requires actually wanting things to get worse so the conditions will change quicker and people are more likely to revolt.
They are arguing that the reason we aren’t experiencing a socialist revolution now is that people’s material conditions are insufficiently bad and that things need to get worse. It’s troubling because I think it leads otherwise leftist people to sit on their hands and wait when there is a need for anti-neoliberal propaganda.
Which I would like to try to take a crack at next. I was hoping to motivate others to do the same with this post. Looks like I could use some work though, this meme seems to be have been so-so at best. It inspired some discussion at least.
Then what they are saying is straight up accelerationism. I’ve never understood that belief, as you aren’t really guaranteed that people will join the revolution on the side of socialism. Fascism f.ex often feeds rather successfully on discontent people
Edit: Not to forget the suffering caused by making things worse as well.
It is, but it’s coming from an otherwise socialist perspective.
In this most recent discussion, this is what it boiled down to.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25671921
how cruel and shortsighted
That is a depressing chart, honestly. A few percentage points at best in the same timeframe when the neofascist US right went from a radical wing of the Republican party they were hesitant about tapping into and into running the entire country. Twice.
During Trump’s first term the positive view of socialism among Dems actually went down two points before recovering to five points up? That’s rookie numbers. Trump went from reviled to actually becoming an outright felon and then to a landslide victory handing him control of every branch of government in the same time period.
And that’s even more shameful once you remember that for Americans “socialist” includes “social democrats”.
There are left wing parties that have marginally better elsewhere, and some are even in government, largely as junior parties in colaitions within parliamentary regimes. The only exception would be Latin America where there have been bigger swings back and forth, but that wasn’t that rare there in the first place.
I don’t think it’s about “telling people about the benefits” or “outreach”. I think traditional powers have what’s left of the information gatekeepers, the alt right has dominance of online discourse and the left has no idea how to use the Internet for anything other than arguing amongst themselves and no idea how to pierce the old media in any reliable fashion.
It is genuinely depressing, and threads like these show zero self-awareness and very little self-criticism. Ascendant neofascists come from some mix of hostile propaganda and radical actors prodding at the information weaknesses of liberal regimes very consciously and very aggressively. The left has never been able to keep that sort of decentralized coordination going for any amount of time without decomposing into niche groups all over again.
It could be better yes, but most right wing parties are doing rather well because of old (read dying) people, while young people are overwhelmingly leftist.
I disagree heavily with this. That’s mostly a thing pushed by tankies, the ones we argue with. But then arguing with tankies isn’t productive either, it is a distraction at best.
What exactly do you propose if not outreach? You seem to criticize the idea of spreading awareness in general. Did you read the parts where I also said the same stuff about what you call information gatekeepers? I should note I am also heavily in favor of direct action and unionization, but doing those things also requires outreach. I think really the best thing to do is irl word of mouth, irl political participation, and establishing good leftist spaces online (without tankies).
It’s not just tankies, beyond Lemmie’s specific local rift.
It’s left leaning liberals with social democrats, social democrats with gramscian leftists, gramscian leftists and classic marxists, all of the above with tankies, or with whatever cosplay anarchists dwell in places like these. And much more, depending on the local political landscape.
Neofascists don’t even feel the need to agree with themselves, they’ll argue one thing and the opposite as long as they get to stir some stuff up online, “own the libs” and win some arguments. There is nowhere near that level of propaganda discipline and willingness to row in the same direction at any point of the left. They broke feminism in two (three or four, really, but a few of those chickens are still to get home) with the slightest of propaganda pressure. They didn’t even need that much to make most left and center-left political coalitions crumble. At this point I assume they’re trying to be gentle when making frustrated leftists stay home in elections because there’s no challenge in it.
My proposal? Take a page from their book. Prioritize wining arguments and mobilizing over practical policy, get to the policy once you’ve consolidated power. Complain that you’re not allowed to deploy the full policy because of the other guys and the establishment all the way up. Never disagree with anybody willing to agree with you on anything. Never agree with a political rival. Never own the failures of the system. Find a scapegoat that works and push it.
None of those things are ideological. But nobody on the left will suspend their purity tests to play in the playground we’ve built for ourselves.
I’m all for dismantling that playground. It’s toxic and grotesque. But you won’t do that with “outreach” and “spreading awareness”. You do that with hard, consolidated institutional power. They know. The left doesn’t.
Me oh my. Yeah no there are other ways than “consolidating power” and lying to people. You can engage people emotionally without being manipulative and still push good policies.
Also, that all sounds very US centric and honestly a bit wrong. It is usually the libs that deplatform and refuse to cooperate with socialists. That’s certainly the case within the democratic party. Same here in norway, with liberals not working with socialists (and rather the populists instead), and with the soc dems only ever reluctantly cooperating with us. It was announced, to my joy, a few days ago that LO (a big union) will finally give some money to the red party (a socialist party) because the reds getting enough votes is the only way the social democrats will win.
Edit: This is also my general understanding of politics everywhere. That centrists and right wingers (libs) have no interest in working with anyone left of them. It’s certainly how fascists have won elections all around the world.
I’m not in the US, let’s start there. I am in a territory that is generally left-leaning and has a left-leaning government, let’s set that next.
And no, there are no other ways than consolidating power because a leftist without a government position is not useful to me at all. A leftist without a seat does not push good policies. They don’t push any policies at all. Governments push policies. The only leftists who push good policies are in government.
There is no need to lie to be engaging, but you do need to convince people. You need to present arguments and you need to win those arguments in the eyes of the people. You need to show the alternatives are doing poorly and create an image that they are incompetent and the cause of the current set of issues. Which should be easy, because they are, by and large.
But that’s not being done. The perception is that the left is deluded, splintered and naive. Those are all perceptions pushed by the right onto the left that the left sucks at dispelling. The implication in your response that popular, effective campaigning and grassroots political action is inherently immoral or requires immoral behavior is itself part of that problem. Hell, we are doing the thing right now. If we were on the fascist spectrum we wouldn’t bother with this nitpicky argument and would just wait for whatever point of contention we can agree on and rally around it. We just suck at this.
Look, it’s ultimately a technical problem. The other side saw the communication tools had a flaw and exploited it. Not because they’re smart, but because they had a million monkeys on typewriters tucked away online and they randomly figured out they could influence real world events for a laugh. And then the nazis caught wind.
We missed that boat and then bought into their narrative that this was something they own that is evil and only they get to do, and so we’re laying out a red carpet for them to own mainstream culture. It’s excurciating to watch.
Well yeah. This we agree on, but it really did not sound like this is what you meant by what you wrote earlier.
No? You read me wrong then.
You were pushing this earlier on in the convo
Yeah, no, we suck at this, like I said.
This conversation is not winning the culture wars. This is the exact purity argument that keeps the left from power.
Find me a solution and I’ll take it. But the solution can’t be to keep doing what we’re doing.
This convo isn’t infighting, even if it isn’t very productive. Neither of us are denouncing any leftist ideologies and we won’t be voting against the left if I’m reading you correctly.
You are correct that something needs to change, and that thing is how we communicate with people. Deceit isn’t necessary. It’s the things you described that I had already described earlier that you for some reason then said was ineffectual before then suddenly supporting it when you were the one saying it?
Here’s a party doing exactly what you suggest. Notice how the party isn’t exactly soaring in the statistics and is disliked by leftists as a result of all the bigotry.
No, see, there’s a difference between being good at using communication tools and being a bigot. That is part of the left’s issue, too. The goal isn’t to scapegoat the same people the right does, that typically does not work. The idea is to scapegoat the same people that are already being targeted (right wing politicians, large corporations, billionaires) effectively.
You keep using the word scapegoat ? I find the way you speak rather iffy in general
Aha. And that’s the left putting the aesthetics of progressivism over the ethics and the politics of progressivisim.
Again, I only care about talking like the good guys talk insofar it gets the good guys a position of political power. Not because we say the right things or we feel the right things or we have a consistent, morally homogeneous maximalist approach to improving the world, but because a butt in a chair can make the world marginally better for the rest.
I’d be more lenient and mushy about that if we weren’t in the process of the second rise of fascism. We’re kind of in panic mode now.
Scapegoating implies being deceitful. It’s not about aesthetics.