cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/tankiejerk/p/635809/i-can-excuse-transphobia-and-covid-denial-but-i-draw-the-line-at-anti-communism-and-criticis
Ever faithful Cowbee will tolerate transphobic admins because they’re communist
PieFed is worse than transphobia because it’s anti-communist
Nutomic will stop being transphobic by 2050.
If anti-communist means anti-tankie, then I am proud to be a left anti-communist.
Cowbee is such a pathetic loser lol
Who are they?? I just assumed some CCP propagandist?
Could be. They are very active.
curious what the context is
but yeah, tankies tend to put authoritarianism before queer identity.
i’ve noticed a surge of anti-piefed posts coming from tankies, seems like they’re afraid
i’ve noticed a surge of anti-piefed posts coming from tankies, seems like they’re afraid
Secure, confident people rarely feel the need to attack people with different opinions.
I actually created my piefed account specifically because tankies bitched about it being “crypto-fash”.
Kinda weird
but considering Tankies call literally everyone a fascist, it’s rather meaningless. they’ve even called anarchists fascists lol
Is PieFed even anti-communist? I wouldn’t really describe Lemmy.world that way personally.
I’m assuming the racism claim is also nonsense but just in case I’d be curious to know specifically what that’s about. Just for criticism of the Chinese government?
They’re conflating anti-authoritarian with anti-communist because it suits their narrative.
Yeah I assume this is exactly what’s happening.
After some pointless arguments with tankies recently someone accused me of being anti-communist and they were incredulous when I expressed ambivalence about it. They truly don’t seem to be aware of the existence of non-authoritarian communists, or at least they pretend not to. Hard to imagine how you could exist in a leftist community and not be aware of like ancoms, etc.
PieFed isn’t anti communist, no. But it is anti-tankie, and I believe one of the reasons it was created was to oppose the Lemmy developers spending more time arguing and banning people than developing Lemmy.
Well most people are anti-tankie that’s just a normal opinion lol
funnily enough most people don’t even know what a tankie is lol
Outside niche online communities and the hordes of tweets, Tankies hold no political relevance. Ironically, the only thing holding up communism’s relevance are boomers fearing the Red Scare from their childhood. Nowadays though, socialism is becoming a liberal idea. Again, ironic for the poor tankie.
I know that tank is is something to do with politics but frankly don’t care what cause politics are yucky (politics confuse me and are boring)
Well, they know what it is they just don’t know the word. The issue is more they don’t know about other types of leftists/communists so they just call them that.
Points well taken but can we stop conflating leftism with social issues such as queer acceptance please? Thats at best a tangential piece of the ideology. I want class war not culture war.
Trans rights are human rights. If you do not accept that, then you can fuck yourself with a rusty rake.
If your definition of leftism doesn’t include queer acceptance, then I’m not interested in your version of leftism.
Any version of bringing the people together to make the world better for the people cannot discriminate based on sexuality. Doing so is to create a multi-tiered citizenship and awarding privilege based on perceived merit, which is right-wing ideology.
Queer groups have been an oppressed group for most of history, which has decidedly placed them into oppressed economic classes, and the culture they developed is a result of that. To dismiss queer acceptance as “culture war,” is to position sexual identity as choice, and to ignore their history of oppression and erasure.
“Leftism” that segregates citizens by sexual orientation, or other identities and backgrounds for that matter, is fascism by another name.
can we stop conflating leftism with social issues such as queer acceptance please?
Absolutely fucking not.
Edit: the only people who have downvoted this comment have argued to seperate leftism from the things that it champions.
I think we should, but for different reasons. And let me explain. Economic systems, left or right are meaningless if you don’t have access. Ie liberty. Fascists and Leninists will trample any class, quash every liberty in pursuit of their desired economic system. A system that serves their petit bourgeois.
Socialism while absolutely more beneficial to society than capitalism. Only benefits you if you are included in that society. Which only happens in inclusive societies focused on freedom of individuals. Socialism, capitalism, neither guarantee that themselves.
Oh, so an enlightened centrist has entered the chat. 🙄
Literally no. Read again. I literally said socialism serves society better. Literally. The whole point being there are unsavory and authoritarians on the left.
I will entertain debate about the benefits of economic systems to a limited point. But not the inclusion of minorities, vulnerable, or other traditionally outcast groups. They must be included.
My comment had one point and you want to put my orientation aside because you find it inconvenient or you don’t understand the topic?
Dafuq you even talking about? What I literally replied to, politely might I add was
can we stop conflating leftism with social issues such as queer acceptance please?
Absolutely fucking not.
Politely trying to nudge you into acknowledging that economics != freedom. The person you were replying to had a point, whether or not I agree with their reasons for making it. Economic systems don’t care about social acceptance. You can have jackbooted socialists (ML) just like the fascists. Being technically socialist doesn’t mean you are good. Having social acceptance does. Regardless of your economic leanings. Though those that are more accepting would tend to naturally be socialist. It isn’t a hard concept.
So, my comment to NOT seperate minority issues from left wing ideology seems to be a little complex for you.
People who prefer to argue human rights open the door to discuss them. Leftism is the tacit acceptance of human rights so there’s no place for culture war. There’s no discussion possible because they are inalienable rights, be it LGBTQ, be it BIPOC, whatever is your minority du jour, human rights are not debatable. The only acceptable response to denial of human rights is violence, not discourse. In that sense, those arguing about inalienable human rights are part of the problem. Cowbee is right in his own special way. We need class war, not culture war.
Cowbee is a fucknugget tankie who only hits the mark if it’s several km wide.
Why not? Are you afraid we win some elections if we start worrying about the underlying issue instead of being goaded into the next silly culture war by the powers that be?
One of the major hall marks of right wing ideology is exclusion based on in and out groups. It’s also one of the worst aspects of the ideology. You want leftists to mimic harmful practices?
Well, for a starter, solidarity is absolutely fundamental to leftist politics - we need the entire working class to organize collectively together. That means we need to ensure that our movement is inclusive and all pulling in the same direction as much as possible. If I go to a union meeting and there’s some guy there just unopposed making homophobic jokes, I will leave the union meeting. This is doubly or even triply more impactful for minority groups who are far more likely to be turned off from a movement which is not inclusive, but even allies in the majority group will be turned off by such behavior.
We need to always keep the class war centered in our perspectives, but we need to also be intersectional - if we are not also considering the ways that minority groups are uniquely and disproportionately affected by capitalism as well as by discrimination and other systemic issues, then we are doing the entire collective movement a huge disservice.
The fact that you see me, a transfeminine person, as well as my rights, as “a cultural war issue” is honestly fucking disgusting. You have the same mindset of the US Democrats who threw trans people under the bus after they lost their last election, even though they didn’t say anything about trans people, and were already seeing them as just a simple variable that they can throw under the bus just like you are doing right now, and they did.
This worldview you have, it is protecting the status quo. In the end, it’s not the people who are winning an election. No, it is cisgender heterosexual white men. It’s their worldview that is being put forward. Everyone else is just something that “we will talk later” and so, never will.
Calling yourself a leftist doesn’t make you one.
Largely unrelated, but how do you personally feel about Pride Month? Particularly, the corporate side of it, the rainbow filters on the brands that historically prosecuted queer identity.
Myself personally I find them turning queer identity into products to consume and collect rather disgusting.
Pride Month is super important for the community. It’s both a moment of joy and a moment of open resistance for us. As for the corporate side of it, I take it as an indicator. Like, for example, no matter what, I will never tolerate brands or even fucking sponsorships at my local pride march. That is absolutely out of the question. But companies pandering to specific communities is nothing new. And it’s not limited to the queer community.
Corporate pandering, to me, is like a canary in a coal mine.
When it’s singing, the air is breathable. So when we have the rainbow logos or the Black Lives Matter corporate post or Black History Month colored logo or whatever, it is a sign that as a whole it would be perceived as, not only unacceptable in the current society to be openly against these things and communities, but is even perceived as marketable and profitable to be openly for these things.
When the canary stops singing, something is wrong with the air, and it’s time to get out. So when companies stop doing these things, and instead don’t mention them, it’s a sign that the wind is turning. That posting open support is deemed risky. That at least a certain part of society is questioning the validity and value of these things
And finally, when the canary is dead, the miners are next. When companies start openly posting against these things, when it becomes marketable and profitable to be openly racist, to be openly transphobic, to be openly homophobic, it’s a sign that society as a whole and not just the ruling class, is hostile to these ideals and people.
I hate that it is, and I want to change it, but we live in a capitalist society. Right now, it’s the rules of the game. So I’m using capitalism as an indicator of society’s acceptance of progressive ideals and hostility towards marginalized groups. Because at the end of the day, I would rather fight against capitalism in a capitalist hellhole where corporate people display their pronouns and say “black lives matter” rather than a capitalist hellhole where corporate people don’t do these things.
The canary stopped singing.That’s actually a really good point, I never considered that, it makes sense. Though I do fear a reactionary sort-of response to the corporate pandering, radicalising old joe who is okay with ‘dem queers’ but once they get into his chicken nugget combo deal, now he’s against them. i wish i was exaggerating, but I know a bloke who ranted about this.
Do you write about other theory too?
We can’t build our lives and our politics around the worries of reactionaries, because doing this is what allows right wingers to shift the narrative constantly. You will always have reactionary responses to these things. Instead we win by the strengths of our proposition, by winning them over despite these grievances.
This is where the Left has failed so many times, because they keep pandering to corporate society. At the end of the day, I strongly believe that — and I’m going to take the United States of America, as an example, because it is quite relevant right now, even though I’m not part of it — the average Joe cares much more about the fact that rent is taking 60% (pulling this number out of my ass) of their income, and that they have to work three jobs, to even pay that rent, rather than the fact that one trans person got one beer can sent to them by a company once.
The failure of the Democrats in the United States of America needs to be studied. Because they failed to appeal to people. Most people voted for them because the opposition was much scarier. But that’s pretty much it. No one really believed in them because the Democrats never really believed in actually changing people’s lives. They were too busy trying to not piss off their corporate interests too much and not appearing too socialist to the right.
They have once again put the interest of the nebulous economy — which, let me remind you, doesn’t actually exist, the economy isn’t a thing, we made it up — rather than the real actual needs of people who definitely are real and are definitely struggling right now. And because of that, you also end up with people who stop believing in politics because every time they voice actual grievances, like the fact that health care is too expensive or whatever, they are being told that their problem would be too expensive to fix. So no one is going to do anything about it.
People voted for Donald Trump not only out of hatred for marginalized groups and so on, even though that played a big part in it, but it’s also because the dude run his mouth constantly. He is always saying some bullshit or whatever, but at least he made it seem like he was going to do something, going to change something, while the Democrats were just too busy sitting on their ass, worrying about what the average reactionary Joe is going to think about if they dare to make any proposition that would be somewhat radical. And they failed because of it.
They dug their head into the sand and screamed “la la la la” every time people questioned them on their bullshit. Their relentless support for Israel was a big one, notably. Just like this person above us, they allowed themselves to be controlled by the right wing which itself was controlling the narrative. They allowed them to do that instead of trying to take control of the narrative themselves. They tried to play a game rigged against them from the start and were surprised when they lost. And when they lost, instead of learning from their lessons because they’re the Democrats, we wouldn’t want that after all, they fucking tripled down and they blamed trans people, even though they never talked about them.
They’re looking at the right wing, and they think we should do that, but our version of it. And they come up with shit like “We need a left-wing Joe Rogan.” And you get Gavin Newsom doubling down on shitting on trans people, and so on.
Meanwhile, people are suffering. And the very people who are suffering from the current administrations are once again being left out of these people’s plans.
Let’s stop catering to the right wing fears. Let’s stop catering to the reactionaries. Let’s stop catering to the corporate interests. We don’t need billionaires to live, not only we can do without them, everyone would benefit from them being gone. The economy is fake, I refuse to give a shit about how the stock market is doing, I don’t care about inflation rising or whatever. All I’m hearing is that my life keeps getting worse and that there are more and more people making sure that it gets worse.
Capitalism is not the natural way of the world. It is young, and it is crumbling all around us, i’m not even 30 years old and I’ve been living my entire life going through what are supposed to be once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis to once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis on and on and to the next. Water is coming through the cracks everywhere. The ship is breaking apart and we’re still pretending that everything is fine because the musicians are still playing, so we can still fix it and move on and reach our destination, wherever the fuck that is.
The entire foundations of our societies are rotten, the economic system on which everything relies on is not only fake, but self imploding. It’s way past time to abandon ship. But instead of doing that we are blaming the “clandestine” passengers who got on board in hope of a better life after their place of origin was completely destroyed and ravaged in the construction of this wonderful ship that we are all on. And while we’re at it, this person is annoying us because they want us to respect their pronouns so everything else that is happening around us it’s actually their fault. Don’t worry, everything is fine.
Nothing else should ever matter than the well-being of this planet and all those who are living on it. People need to hear that the rules aren’t there, that the game is rigged. Because it is. But instead, we keep telling them that, actually no. And it’s just that some people are cheating and making it worse for everyone else. And these people are always those that are struggling the most, of course.
Anyway, did I tell you that I fucking hate capitalism and all of these self-proclaimed left-wing parties that keep catering to its every ask?
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To answer your question, by the way, I don’t really write about theory. I’m not a scholar. I’m just a random bunnygirl on the internet. 🐇
