1. If someone claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they’re lying.
  2. Downvotes mean I’m right.
  3. It’s always Zenz. Every time.
  • 2 Posts
  • 199 Comments
Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: April 30th, 2024

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  • I only brought up Jim Crow in response to the claim that the the state will protect people and that there are ways to appeal the state of it doesn’t. The point being that having legal protections on paper is not always enough to keep people safe.

    The “fascist enablers” don’t have consciences you can appeal to, because what drives them is money, and they are specifically selected for their willingness to serve capital and cause harm to innocent people. The system selects for sociopaths.

    You analysis takes absolutely zero account of the systems or material conditions that exist which compel people to act in certain ways. Germany had an unemployment rate of 30% in 1932, but in your mind, it seems like the communists were only fighting because they wanted to and the capitalists were just reacting to that.

    Had everyone on the left coordinated on mass nonviolent actions, like mass strikes for example, the capitalists would still have turned to the fascists in order to preserve their money and power. Violence or nonviolence doesn’t matter, what matters is whether their positions are threatened. You either never do anything to gain power in hopes of being able to beg your enemies for mercy, or you do whatever it takes to win so you don’t have to rely on that. The in between stuff where you pull your punches and try to disrupt things without defending yourself is the surest way to get yourself killed.


  • Because he’s rich and powerful and laws are just threats made by the ruling class, which he’s a part of. The law is primarily a tool of class warfare and as such is only enforced consistently and in full force against the working class. Very occasionally, one rich person pisses off enough other rich people to be subject to it, but you have to be extremely bad at the game for that to happen. The more rich people are subjected to the law, the easier it is to be subjected to the law yourself if you’re rich, so generally you’re better off looking the other way while they do illegal shit so that you can get away with your own illegal shit. Plus they have the resources to fight you, so it means picking a costly battle.



  • Maybe if we just don’t fight the Nazis, they won’t be able to justify violence against us 🤡

    Yeah let’s just allow roving gangs of brownshirts to run around attacking and terrorizing minorities because if we don’t they might stage an attack and the “atmosphere of violence” we’ve created by trying to keep people safe will allow them to blame it on us and seize power. The solution is to just allow them to seize power directly through force, without resistance.

    This is nonsense. Nazis don’t need a justification to use force against you, they can literally just lie and make shit up, like they did with the Reichstag Fire. It doesn’t matter if it’s true because it’s directed at the weakest and most vulnerable and stigmatized populations, who have the least capacity to fight back and the fewest platforms to counter their narratives, and once they’re done with them they work their way up. They will create terror on the streets and then use the fact that the streets are full of terror to seize power. People are going to try to defend themselves when attacked whether you think they should or not, so the only question is whether that resistance is strong enough to actually work.


  • I’ve seen too many examples throughout history of people trying to use nonviolence and do things the right way and just getting slaughtered because the other side simply does not care to be a pacifist. The world is clearly a better place because people employed violence in WWII to stop the Nazis. And street fighting in the 30’s was one of the ways that the Nazis secured their power in the first place.

    Nonviolent methods are tools that are useful to have in your toolbox, and in many situations, they are more practical in achieving your ends. But there are cases were violence is more practical, even necessary, and one shouldn’t shy away from it when it’s needed. You gotta have your head in the game, the stakes are too high. A diversity of tactics is best.

    The logic that violence is oppressive so it should be renounced in all cases in order to reduce oppression is idealist. You have to look at the actual evidence and material situation to evaluate what effects violence will have in a given situation.

    Punching Nazis is cool and good. Just try not to get arrested for it because it’ll take you out of the action longer than it will them.






  • I don’t agree that that’s an “of course.” There should be discussion of specific local races in a general politics community. Like I said, presidential votes only matter in a handful of states. If you add up the populations of swing states, I’m sure it’s higher than any individual state, but there are still some pretty big states where millions of people live that that aren’t included in that. And yeah, everyone is affected by the presidential race, but everyone is affected by congressional races too. If you want to say, let’s say 90% of the content should be on the race that’s relevant to people living in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and maybe North Carolina that’s fine, but if the rest of us have to see their content all the time, then they shouldn’t mind if they have to see like 10% of the content relevant to the people who live in some of the other 44 states.

    And to be clear, this isn’t something I’m saying about Lemmy in particular. Go anywhere in America, from the deepest red state to the deepest blue state, and ask about the latest story-of-the-week about the presidential race, and people will know about it and have an opinion on it and care about it. Ask them about local races, and they’ll be far less knowledgeable far less invested, and will probably try to fit it into a framework based on the one race they actually care about, even if they can’t affect it in any way.

    There would be so much more potential to cut through battle lines if people would go like, “OK, fine, you don’t like either candidate, you don’t have to vote for them. But do you mind if I ask what state you live in? Maybe there’s someone running for congress or governor who’s more to your tastes. I’d be happy to look into who’s running and discuss them with you.”

    But nobody wants that shit. We want the battle lines, we want the group identity, the team sports. We don’t want to do research about boring shit nobody cares about, we want a constant stream of engaging news stories and hot takes that we can all experience together, as a culture.