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“10 degrees to the left in good times, 10 degrees to the right when it affects them personally.”
I don’t understand the memes connection between liberals and fascism.
Yelling at other lefties for not being left enough is a long and proud tradition.
Liberals aren’t lefties.
Thank you for demonstrating my point without the slightest hint of irony.
Did you step out of a time machine from the 18th century? Liberals now represent conservative forces.
Have you lot just rebadged Libertarians?
Libertarians arent liberals unless you compare them to really ancient ones, they have hangups about the role of the state in preserving capitalism which leaves them laughing stock.
OK, I agree that libertarians are not liberals. They are mostly conservatives who don’t want to pay tax.
I’m still not following on why you don’t think Liberals are Left wing.
Thank you for demonstrating my point without the slightest hint of irony.
Do you really not understand that there’s a conceptual distinction there at all? You started out by saying it’s a proud leftist tradition to call out other lefties for not being left enough. Which, honestly, fair enough.
But you think even the very idea of a conceptual distinction between liberals and leftists is an example of that? That’s fucking nuts, and it’s not the nuanced point you think it is.
The difference between liberals and the left is the stance on capitalism. Liberals believe they can make capitalism work, leftists insist we must move beyond it. The people obfuscating liberal and leftist are the people who want the discussion of moving past capitalism to stop. Don’t help them.
I disagree. There are plenty of examples of liberal anti-capitalists such as David Ellerman
So that’s it, is it? I can support all the social progressiveness I like, but as soon as I balk at the prospect of an autocrat hosting a violent revolution and instating communism, I’m the enemy?
Here is the definition I run on: Anyone left of centre is left. Anyone reaching for the guillotines (or more likely just meming about them from a basement) is far left. So far left that they will never see power and see everyone right of them as an enemy.
You’ve chosen a definition thats dependent on where you percieve ‘center’ to be. Its a variable point therefore to you that word doesn’t have a fixed meaning. A European centerist is an American left leaner, a decade ago the american ‘left’ was talking about UBI and medicade for all, now they’re talking about fixing bridges that are about to fall down. You’re either blind to the overton window shifting or happy that things like infrastructure upkeep is now considered ‘leftism’ but despite your best efforts, words still have meaning. You’re one of the people trying to obfuscate those meanings.
You don’t get to gatekeep leftism behind communism.
Nice buzzword, but it’s not me gatekeeping anything. Thats what leftism has meant since the phrase neoliberalism has existed. Im not the one who made the definition, you’re just ignoring it.
Words mean what people think they mean. “Decimate” means to remove 10% of something but everyone uses it as a synonym for annihilate. You need to understand that the vast majority of people see “liberals” and “leftists” as the same thing. Your conspiracy about obfuscation is cute but you’re giving people too much credit.
I’m not trying to be rude but you’re embarrassing yourself. Please educate yourself of political theory, philosophy and terminology before you start speaking on words and concepts that you clearly don’t understand. Here’s a good place to start. He makes great political theory videos. Here’s a playlist geared specifically towards liberalism. Here’s something on anti-fascism. All of those resources aren’t the end-all-be-all of politics but they’re at least a good place to start and you’ll be better off for it. Have a good one
Nobody but tankies understand that.
In Tolkien stories, all the good guys are liberals. Saruman and his uruk-hai are perhaps the most leftist things there are in those stories. Elves are moderate conservatives with some questionable histories.
Lol, saruman was more or less a theocratic monarchist with highly authoritarian practices like killing any who opposed his will. He literally used magic to dominate the wills of others. If anyone was leftist in that series it was the Hobbits. They were outright Communist with no government. Though there was certainly still a class structure of sorts there. It’s just tough to get a better look at Hobbit social politics. The books tend to just say “then they talked about their family history for 3 more hours” whenever it comes up.
Regardless, the stated intent of the story was to relay his experiences with war. Not with any political system. The forces of sauron and saruman just represented war itself. The feeling of its inevitable March towards you no matter how much you don’t want it and dread it. It’s very much how I’ve been feeling lately.
Hobbits had a government and a class system. In Tolkien it’s divine monarchies all the way down, some are just God willed and others are… Technically also God willed, because the good guys need bad guys to stab, I guess.
Saruman and his uruk-hai are perhaps the most leftist things there are in those stories.
What? How so?
Because I don’t like leftists, probably :)
No but seriously, I was thinking of the tankie type there, not all leftists. And wrote lazily. Sorry.
Tankies aren’t leftists and Sauron isn’t a tankie.
Tankies aren’t leftists
Well yeah, and nazis are technically authoritarian centrists, not the far right. These labels are bad and they should feel bad.
Sauron
Different fella. No idea what his politics are, but probably not very liberal.
No, Sauron is the same character I meant to talk about. The master of Saruman. Sauron is a theocratic dictator, and Saruman is, politically speaking, a Bishop-Duke. His ideology must be the same as Sauron’s because he serves Sauron. And Sauron implements theocratic dictatorship in Isengard and Mordor. Theocratic dictatorship, as you must be aware, is a far right ideology. And nazis are also far right, but I’m not sure why they’re the topic of discussion.
Nazism (/ˈnɑːtsɪzəm, ˈnæt-/ NA(H)T-siz-əm; also Naziism /-si.ɪzəm/),[1] the common name in English for National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus, German: [natsi̯oˈnaːlzotsi̯aˌlɪsmʊs] ⓘ), is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany.
But really…
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
— Jean-Paul Sartre
Well obviously because when Pippin was sick, the orcs gave him free medicine
/s
Does Hobbiton have any sort of government that I’m forgetting about or otherwise unaware of? I’ve always thought of it as an anarchists paradise
“The Shire at this time had hardly any ‘government.’ Families for the most part managed their own affairs. … The Thain was the master of the Shire-moot, and captain of the Shire-muster and the Hobbitry-in-arms, but as a muster and moot were only held in times of emergency, which no longer occurred, the Thainship had ceased to be more than a nominal dignity.”
Sounds like night-watch libertarianism that had declined to something even more minimal. Which ironically was easily run over by a smooth-talking old man with a staff and a pretty small bunch of ruffians. You had one job.
Yeah but he had fireworks though
I think at that point all he had was smooth talking.
Like if we could imagine a president who tried to regain his power by usurping, failed and lost all his power, and then somehow is allowed to try again. Aren’t we glad LOTR is just fantasy, that’d be horrible.
I would argue Gandalf uses not smooth talking, but fast talking. He does whatever he wants before the hobbits have even mustered up the indignation to say no. That’s what happens at the beginning of the Hobbit. The book says most of the respectable hobbits hated Gandalf and only the children and the adventurous liked him, and nobody respected the adventurous hobbits all too much, Bagginses and their wealth not withstanding.
Smooth talking old man that is secretly a god.
Angel, not God.
Hobbiton is definitely capitalist or feudalist in some idealised fantasy manner. Samwise is employed as Frodo’s gardener because Bilbo’s dragon treasure made the Bagginses rich.
Tolkien was a wonderful man personally, but he struggled at thinking outside of the paradigms he knew, which were based on catholicism. Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally christian story in a lot of subtle ways that have had negative ramifications on the entire genre of fantasy in the decades since. I will say that Tolkien believed in the selfless, loving christianity that Jesus was talking about, and that’s pretty good, but it’s not perfect. It leads to blindnesses like the fact that the only governments present in Middle Earth are feudalism (hobbits, men, elves), theocracy (orcs), and just literally being one with nature (ents). Jesus may have said to give a poor man the cloak off your back, but by the 20th century those ideas had been filtered through Rome’s horrible point of view and England’s worse one. The possibility space for what a devout christian can conceptualise had been reduced, even when reading the words directly from the bible.
Anyway if you’re curious about the more significant problems with Tolkien’s worldbuilding, the big one is the racial controversy surrounding orcs that arose when people started moving an explicitly christian myth into realist settings, and to a lesser extent there’s the “fallen empire” trope that I just find really annoying in everything except Halo and Warframe (this is because both of those games state that the fallen empire sucked and were destroyed by their own hubris, which is just so juicy).
I don’t know that I’d call Halo anti-fascist lol, but otherwise this a great breakdown of Tolkien’s mindset while creating Middle Earth that hits the important elements without getting lost in the weeds, like trying to figure out whatever the fuck Tolkien thinks “anarcho monarchism” actually is and how, exactly, it’s different, much less better, than an absolute monarchy.
The core thesis of Halo is “if soldiers were allowed to do whatever they want, they’d destroy the world”. Halo 1, Chief wants to fire the ring and Cortana stops him. Halo 2, Arby wants to genocide the humans and everyone says that’s a bad idea and then he gets genocided. Halo 3, Hood wants to do a heroic last stand on earth and everyone says that’s a bad idea. Halo ODST, stop killing huragok they’re slaves. Halo Reach, stop going down in a blaze of glory and carry cortana. Halo 4, stop putting your giant phallic ship before earth. Also the whole reason for the human covenant war is that Truth lied and started a genocide to avoid admitting that humans are gods.
Every single game is about soldiers and politicians making bad decisions based on violence, hate, and pride until a scientist or a smart person stops them and explains what’s actually going on.
And then a literal Ubermensch saves the galaxy, again, mostly with violence.
I get what you mean, but I think that message might be getting lost if that was the intention. Plus all those smart people still work for space fascists in the first place.
Heck, reminding myself of the details of the UEG/UNSC I’m looking at a Reddit thread right now were some poor kid asked if they had a shadow fascist government and all the comments are assuring him no, a military junta is in fact very cool and based, so even if the writers intended that poor kid’s questioning to be the goal of the Halo narrative, um, mission failed.
The Master Chief has massive psychological trauma from being a child soldier. That trauma has always been a central part of his arc, and whether the covenant’s invasion justifies Halsey’s actions in retrospect has always been a central question of the universe. The reason Halsey is kind of a Nazi is that she’s implanted with a Geas by the librarian to follow in the footsteps of the Forerunners, and the forerunners sucked. Halo is concerned with big philosophical questions, and I like those questions, and none of the answers to those questions say fascism is okay.
In Tolkien stories, all the good guys are liberals. Saruman and his uruk-hai are perhaps the most leftist things there are in those stories.
Welp, that’s simultaneously the most “Enlightened Centrist” thing and the most batshit crazy dumb as a rock thing I’ve read in 2024 so far!
Donald Trump himself has less stupid takes than that!
and the most batshit crazy dumb as a rock thing I’ve read in 2024 so far!
Aww, don’t sell yourself short.
I’m not. If anything, I’m going too easy on your absolutely brain dead take.
In Tolkien stories, all the good guys are liberals. Saruman and his uruk-hai are perhaps the most leftist things there are in those stories. Elves are moderate conservatives with some questionable histories.
I hope everyone here appreciates what a special moment this is. This has potential to be the most downvoted comment on Lemmy.
It’s a bit sad for Lemmy if 76 downvotes gets you to such a status. But mixing an interpretation of Tolkien with an anti-left message might indeed be one of the best ways to get there.
You might enjoy my other greatest hit: https://suppo.fi/comment/3202858
Don’t worry, it’s 76 and counting.
It’s actually 88 total downvotes for a net score of -76 lol
That comment somehow manages to be more divisive than the Palestinian conflict. A truly remarkable sequence of specious assertions that is guaranteed to piss off vast swathes of the population. Almost brings a tear to my eye
Did people forget what divisive means? I would say it’s exactly the opposite of divisive, it’s a comment that is produced as much singular unified reaction as you could possibly get.
I meant what I said. Most people disagree with the comment, but probably for a wide variety of reasons. It’s not a singular reaction, it’s multiple reactions to multiple insinuations that all happen to be questionable.
Yeah and I meant what I said that you don’t get what divisive actually means.
As a far left anarchist that loves Lord of the Rings I was very specifically offended
Liberals have a tendency to tolerate fascists more than is reasonable. They believe in granting fascists basic respect as serious political actors. They treat disagreements with fascists as intellectual debates with decorum and rules.
Joe Biden shouldn’t have gone to the 2020 presidential debates armed with facts and arguments. He should have stepped up to the podium and said “this man is a murderer and deserves to be killed.” It is the result of liberalism that this cannot be said in such a setting.
Maybe like in Sweden, where the liberals went from calling themselves proud of being called the enemies of fascism, saying they will hide refugees if made illegal, to just straight up calling it “liberal politics actually”, and are now collaborating with them to form a government. Crazy how that happens every time.
Easy enough when you label anything to the right of your stance as facist.
It’s like what Aristotle said about the differences between the Rash, the Courageous, and the Cowardly.
The Rash person thinks the courageous man is too cowardly, and the cowardly person thinks the courageous one is too rash. So everyone will declare that they the others are extreme, and in so doing they build their biases in.
This is the problem with unqualified statements about who’s to the left of who, and especially the problem with both-sidesism. The act of making that kind of statement doesn’t happen in some platonic realm of innocent and honest self-reflection, and is every bit as poisoned by politicization as every other political activity.
It doesn’t mean there’s no truth or you can’t say stuff like this, but it does mean that we’re all within our rights to dismiss you as a bullshit artist if you don’t show your work.
Usually with the rash, you can get a cream for it from your doctor or pharmacist.
On my podcast.
As a left handed person I don’t know why people hate us so much, what is wrong for using left hand as main?
Take your goofy scissors and get the fuck out!
You mean the Sinister hand? Highly suspicious. Why not use the Dexterous hand? Surely that would work better for manual tasks.
Difference in thought is dangerous to the established power structures. It starts with thinking that you can use a different hand to wipe your ass and evolves into thinking maybe the rulers shouldn’t be ruling.
No but if you tug your meat with your left more than your right by the time you die, believe it or not, straight to hell
…not wrong. Except remember that an idea cannot be genuinely destroyed, since it’s not an actual physical thing. Even if you did somehow manage to destroy it in the present day, nothing prevents people from creatively coming up with it again.
Netanyahu wants to learn this the hard way.
Find another way that doesn’t involve death, destruction and ill-fated attempts at control.
A platitude. The fascists are already trying to kill us, we need to fight back. Both sides are not the same.
Not a platitude, a harsh and brutal reality. Though I do agree that it is time to fight fascism. Just don’t think you can actually destroy it by fighting like this is all some fictional story with a happily-ever-after. Real life doesn’t work that way, only fiction.
Real life needs more difficult and complicated fixes.
Netanyahu wants to learn this the hard way.
Netanyahu knows. It’s how that corrupt bastard stays in power and out of prison.
Ah yes Tucker Carlson, famous liberal
I assumed the meme referred to all the interviews being done at CPAC right now.
I’m in favor. Expose the rot. Too much of the US citizenry doesn’t understand the threat these people pose. It takes them actually showing their stripes to understand what’s at stake.
To underscore this, NBC did an article about the presence of self-identified Nazis and similar worst of the worst undesirables at CPAC. CPAC disputed that they were there by invitation, but it’s hard to not see it as a plus that NBC is holding their feet to the fire.
Taylor Lorenz did a very big disservice to herself by interviewing the LibsOfTikTok lady.
I was just imagining him holding Putin over a fire, while Reddit looks on and shouts, “cast him into the flames!”
Why reddit in particular?
…while Lemmy.ml chant in the background, “hero! Hero!”, and Truth Social make paper aeroplanes of money and toss them into the general vicinity, and Facebook is scrambling up the mountainside shouting, “I’m going to save him!” “No! I’ll push him in;” and
Nah, I’ve no idea. Just what came to mind in the moment
There was no inter, only a view.
Ideologically speaking, in the broad senses of “socialism, liberalism, and fascism,” yes, Tucker pretends to be a liberal. That is what American conservativism should be conserving, as that’s what the American Experiment is, liberalism.
