cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22758205
The House of Representatives on Thursday passed the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act in a 219-184 vote largely along party lines, with 15 Democrats joining the Republican majority.
Republicans were quick to highlight what they described as flip-flopping by Democrats who previously supported the bill, chalking the change up to “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Despite a majority of Democrats coming out against it in last week’s vote, the bill still received the support of 52 Democrats on November 12. On Thursday, that number dwindled to 15, as Democrats flipped in opposition, including Reps. Angie Craig, D-Minn., and Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M., both of whom cited Trump’s increasingly unhinged cabinet selections in their statements prior to the vote.
“I strongly oppose any actions that support foreign terrorist organizations,” Craig said Wednesday on X. “However, over the past several days as the president-elect has rolled out his cabinet nominees, I’ve become increasingly concerned that H.R. 9495 would be used inappropriately by the incoming Administration.”
authoritarian
fuck you fuck off baby-brained bullshit either a government has authority or it doesn’t and isn’t a government. these same shitheads will tell you it’s a motherfucking democracy
Bookmarking Engels to show it to libs in the wild
Is there a response to radlibs who say on authority is debunked and rote?
Tell them to substantiate the claim instead of just going “um, that’s been declared incorrect”
Granted, I think people copy-paste On Authority too much (though I basically agree with it), and it comes off kind of bad in that respect because, when a bunch of people always jump to telling you to read a text and it’s always the same text, it comes off as (and often is) book worship. Think of how liberals came off during the election cycle with every single fucking one of them saying “it’s a trolley problem”. Again, I don’t think On Authority is wrong, I just think it’s a faulty tactic rhetorically. In that respect, I guess “rote” is right. The people telling you it’s “debunked” can still get fucked.
Fair enough, this is the sort of critique I was thinking of fwiw. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/london-anarchist-federation-the-problems-with-on-authority
To be honest with you, I am not very interested in this, but I’ll point out as what I think is a meaningful and bizarre ideological failure because it’s easy to:
After going on, in an essay directed against Leninists, about the importance of dual power, with no recognition of the irony therein, this paragraph pops up:
Some Leninists might still advocate authority as a method by which one more “advanced” elements of the working class bring other elements of the working class into line in the fight against capitalism. But this can only ever re-create a class dynamic within the workers’ organisation and sabotage our own goals. If, at a given moment, the working class as a whole is not sufficiently class-conscious to defeat capitalism without resorting to authority, true social revolution is not possible at that moment. As Marx said “The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves.” to which I would add that “the workers themselves” can not be taken to mean some tiny sub-faction of the working class that is destined to become a new exploiting class.
This person either catastrophically misunderstands Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, or they are willfully misrepresenting it so they have an excuse to do “The People’s Stick” Bakunin bullshit like their type just love to do.
The philosophy that Engels is arguing for is one of democracy overcoming capitalism, and the authority of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is the dictatorship of the many over the few. This few inevitably includes some proletarians for various reasons, though it is more discussed as being bourgeois because they are overwhelmingly within this collection of minorities. No one has an interest in this red aristocracy that the author strains to depict.
The author furthermore bares the poverty of their philosophy in this insinuation that the entire working class must be in unanimous agreement, that of a population of millions or even hundreds of millions, every single one must individually have all policies be completely in line with how they spontaneously prefer to act. That is the only way we can interpret these claims about “the working class as a whole”. No, we should not hold back 9/10ths of a hypothetical class-conscious working population because the remaining 1/10th isn’t on the same page.
I really think though that the average person can see problems like these just by having a passing familiarity with Marxism, specifically reading On Authority, and then reading this essay. I say that on good authority because I might be average on a good day.
Can’t even get people to agree with something as simple as what flavor of pie is the best for thanksgiving. If we were to build any organization that disintegrates instantly the moment anyone exhibits any divergency of opinions on everything under the sun, then quite frankly what’s the point?
but also they say that force is not the same thing as authority, even though you can impose force upon others for whatever reasons… that’s right in the beginning
They do say that, but I’m not understanding your meaning in mentioning it. Could you say a little more?
Really rolling out the red carpet for him. I bet we don’t even see a quarter of the symbolic #Resistance there was last time
#TheAssistance
Damn, a local place I go to finally got a nonprofit designation after years of being undeniably based. And being undeniably based will likely lose them that designation.
I put together the 15 remaining Dems and their margin of victory to give people an idea of what safe seats are. I’ll be looking into which ones are really vulnerable to primaries or not. https://serlava.substack.com/p/15-democratic-party-holdouts-voted
Thank you for this work! I can’t stand the medias desire to not name and shame when it comes to this kind of news. I’m happy to see none of my representatives are on this list.
EXACTLY. Check the previous article for the 53 original reps who supported it when it failed the 2/3rds floor vote. I had a previous representative of mine support it at that point, and that’s barely less bad imo
So similar to Georgia’s NGO bill
