The kind of socialism that’s just state owned capitalism isn’t even socialism at all if you ask me.

You asked what kind of socialism I like. I really liked the elected leader of Sweden Olof Palme who enhanced socialism by strengthening unions with the long term goal of turning them into workers cooperatives. He was unfortunately assassinated before he could see that through. But this form of non authoritarian socialism is how I would like to see the rise of socialism.

I also agree that unions and class struggle work too. But part of that is being politically involved and voting. I’m not diminishing the work of unions, my whole point is emphasizing the power of voting. Not voting is literally throwing away the limited amount of political capital you have.

Organize. Unionize. Share theory. But also vote.

P.s. I’m not down voting you. I known that’s silly to comment but I don’t try to punish people having good faith arguments with me.

The truth is the dems suck. They will do anything for a buck. They will support genocide for a buck. And they will lose an election they know they could win because the electorate will just swing right back to them in after they had another taste of republicans for 4 years if it means they keep getting that sweet sweet AIPAC money.

From a pragmatic standpoint, not voting isn’t teaching the democratic establishment a damn thing. They’re far more afraid of you voting for change within the party than they are afraid of you not voting and temporarily ceding power to the right. Then they get to leave in the obscene things the Republicans enacted that also make the dems money without it looking like they wanted it to happen.

The reality is that if more people voted consistently then the political machine would actually be beholden to the voters. Politics would actually shift left towards popular policy instead of just swing back and forth. But people don’t vote. So they can just ignore what you want most of the time. And now we have the deal with whatever the fuck the authoritarians leading project 2025 can manage to fanangle. And if they get their way the american people will either accept things the way Russians and Hungarians have and the worlds largest army will be run by uninhibited authoritarian fascists, or the country will get very bloody.

But on the front of this single election and not voting. Its a literal trolley problem. Vote for 1 person to get run over or don’t vote/flip the switch and watch 3 people get run over. Either way, blood is on your hands. It’s on mine. But there’s a little less. No decision is still a decision. Not voting for genocide enabled more death. I don’t see how that can be morally superior when the practical outcome is worse.

If you oppose genocide then you’d do everything you could to prevent as much genocide as possible. Enabling Trump by not voting and encouraging others not to vote is going to get a lot of people killed. It’s going to get people put in concentration camps, deported to counties they’ve never been to and will struggle to survive in, result in the erasure of trans people, get women killed in childbirth, get people killed on the job as workers safety rights diminish, get children killed as child labor laws disappear, expand the power Russia has over Ukraine (a country they have commited genocide on before), and still get Palestinians in Gaza and the west bank murdered. It honestly makes “you” almost as bad as the fascists in my opinion. Maybe everyone who didn’t vote because of Palestine can go vacation in Gaza after Trump has built a few hotels there and see the real true work all those protest votes helped accomplish.

I’m not absolving dems for being involved in the genocide in Gaza. Their support for Zionism is obscene. But a lot more damage is going to be done now that the power is strengthening in the executive branch under trump and it’s extremely privlidged to act like a protest vote was the morally superior option.

But I’m a socialist because I also think that the means of production should be owned by the workers.

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

I get down voted from the .ml crowd for informing them their support of Trump, either direct or inadvertent, isn’t going to save Palestine its just going to get trans people killed and this gets me either blocked or banned. These people see an authoritarian and they can’t help but get a boner.

I’m a socialist. But I’m an anti authoritarian first.

I’m OOTL on hexbear. I know its tankie, but wasn’t it a continuation of the chapo trap house subreddit which was was leftie memes? And chapo trap house started from supporters of the podcast, which is run by Democratic socialists. How did the community get so tankie?

Removed by mod

I did that for years and then I emigrated because it didn’t work.

Removed by mod

They aren’t the same. But they don’t need to be the same for them to both suck and not deserve to be in power. But harm reduction is real.

OK. But what are you actually doing right now? What are any of us doing right now?

While you do recognize Orban, the afd, and Lukashenko, you bring them up as a way to suggest that that Americans should not ask for sympathy on Trump because they have done nothing to prevent these a other authoritarian governments from forming. Nobody is asking you or your country to step in and save America from Trump. We all know America did that to its self and has to live with it now.

But we are all living under systems in which the fascists are dominating the propaganda machine in “the west.” It is not something happening in isolated pocks in the few scenarios you list. You give whiplash by indicating both the the individual has not done anything/enough to prevent genocide and Trump and that it is also not their personal fault. But then you still say that you will support this person once they (or Americans generally) fix the threat to you. But the call is coming from within the house. They can not entirely fix the threat to you even if they managed to fix the entire us political system. It is not just their Democratic system resulting in this.

They deserve sympathy as we all do or likely will. May we all be saved from the poor decisions of our nationalal peers.

Edit

Its wild how judgey this is when many EU voters are flirting with voting for fascists as well.

Its difficult because the dems 100% were enabling genocide. But, crazy enough, there’s bad and worse genocide.

People who protest vote think they’re “showing the dems” when they don’t vote. Maybe the dems lose now but they learn a painful lesson and change in the future.

But here’s the thing. The dems would rather lose to republicans than change. They will eat your protest vote. And they will accept they lost power for 4 years. And then they get re-elected and go back to what they were doing before. Being greedy and taking money from lobbyist as much as possible, including AIPAC, but not outright malicious. They never change because people only vote centrist dem or further right.

And them dems suck. They’re bad. But Republicans? They’re worse. They aren’t doing genocide just for the profits. They’re also doing it for the fun of it. The dems will show some restraint to avoid war with Iran. The Republicans won’t.

So the protest vote won’t show the dems shit. It will just unleash unapologetic genocide instead of milquetoast genocide. And while they’re at it, the republicans will tank the economy and fuck up the lives of every minority they can manage.

Americans do a lot of SMS.

In understand cherry picking just fine. You only like the data that fits your narrative and it’s pretty obvious. Any thing doesn’t firt your narrative is “liberal” or an “outlier.” People like you always have excuses when the evidence doesn’t say exactly what you want it to.

Sounds like a lot of mental gymnastics for cherry picking.