I would really rather that these were actual examples, and not conspiracy theories. We all have our own unsubstantiated ideas about what shadowy no-gooders are doing, but I’d rather hear about things that are actually happening.
The concept of trickle down economics. Anyone with a functioning brain can tell you that it would never work. But somehow people as a whole in the US still think giving corporations and rich cunts extra money, and tax breaks somehow lead to the 99% reaping a benefit.
It has never been true because the basic function of capitalism is to get as much money as possible, while spending the least amount of money to do it. There’s no room for passing on the extra profits to your employees, clients, or vendors.
Supply-side Jesus (short animation) is a brilliant take on trickle-down economics and circular arguments about why the successful are successful and the poor are poor.
“Tax cuts will double our revenues and ensure that the empire never declines or falls!”
“Should you feed the lepers, Supply side Jesus?”
“No Thomas, that would just make them lazy.”
“Then shouldn’t you at least heal them Supply Side Jesus?”
“No James, leprosy is a matter of personal responsibility. If people knew I was healing the lepers there would be no incentive to avoid leprosy”Lol yep, any child who has played monopoly a few times can see how capitalism works. It always ends in one person having literally all the property and money… and generally with players quite upset at one another. And once all players have optimized the game, it simply becomes a game of luck.
Indeed, that’s why monopoly was invented. It was meant to illustrate how stupid and unsustainable capitalism and private property are.
any child who has played monopoly a few times can see how capitalism works. It always ends in one person having literally all the property and money.
It’s literally the name of the game.
Trickle down economics does work though.
It’s just that the thing that trickles down isn’t money.
In theory it does work, and it has historically worked in the past. A lot of wealthy people in the last few centuries were philanthropists that built schools, hospitals and other public works.
The main deterrent these days is that your typical billionaire is greedy and entitled.
Plus as we saw with some merchants and colonial figures, your name could be scrubbed from the history books and statues of you torn down if your past actions are incompatible with modern day morals. Edward Colston is a good example because despite him pumping a lot of money into philanthropic projects, he made his fortune from the transatlantic slave trade.
I can almost guarantee that people would have much more favourable views of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, etc if they pumped tonnes of money into building new homes and actual public transport infrastructure.
Starting a private space company doesn’t count as philanthropy. As for Bill Gates, years of medical disinformation have built up this narrative that he’s pumping money into medical research and vaccination programmes for nefarious reasons, like planting microchips into people.
Israel is defending itself against an antisemitic terrorist group which attacked it for no reason
Anyone that says J6 was a “peaceful protest” that “got out of hand”
We all saw the footage of that day. There were gallows and calls to hang a sitting vice president.
It was an insurrection, fomented and encouraged by Donald Trump’s speech and actions leading up to that day. Plain and simple.
The right-wingers who say it wasn’t as serious as it was are gaslighting their base.
Edit: Victims of gaslighting in my replies
Sounds exactly like CNN’s headline “fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting” after the George Floyd protests where like, 30 people died.
Do you not think it’s relevant to point out that:
- Only 3.7% of the protests involved vandalism or property damage
- Only 2.3% of the protests involved any sort of violence (excluding vandalism or property damage)
- Much of the violence was directed against the BLM protesters
- Much of the violence was begun or escalated by police (who are supposed to be trained to de-escalate)
- Much of the property damage and property damage was not linked to protesters
If 5% of the people involved at violent BLM protests were violent and if the numbers above reflected only protester initiated violence, then that would mean roughly 0.12% of BLM protesters (or 1 in a thousand) were violent. But since, as we know, most of the violence was directed against them, that number is probably more like 0.05%, or 5 in 10,000. Obviously that number would be much worse for the actual instigators of most of the violence (police and far-right Trump supporters).
Also weird that you say “like 30 people” died when it was more like 10:
- 8 BLM protesters
- 1 far-right, pro-Trump protester, who was shot by a self-identified anti-fascist protester who said he had been acting in self-defense
- the above anti-fascist protester, who was shot by police
Yes, there were like 25 deaths related to political unrest in 2020, but most of those were not at BLM protests. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed-protests-political-unrest-acled
But hey, keep telling yourself that an active, intentionally orchestrated attempt by Trump and his supporters to violently overturn the results of our Presidential election was “basically the same thing lol” as a bunch of people who were protesting police violence and racism.
It’s comments like this that make me glad Lemmy has a star that lets you favorite them. Thank you very much.
an active, intentionally orchestrated attempt by Trump and his supporters to violently overturn the results of our Presidential election was “basically the same thing lol” as a bunch of people who were protesting police violence and racism.
Yes, that’s exactly what I said. -_-
How’s that exactly alike?
Conversely, anyone who says January 6th was a coup or anything approaching more then a wet fart. We should be so lucky that a fascist police state could be overthrown by 200 disorganized unarmed people walking into the capitol.
Whether it was a successful coup is a separate matter.
The problem wasn’t them getting anywhere near literally overthrowing the entire state, but the fact that they were trying/hoping to kill people.
There’s so many levels on which it is deeply concerning. One is just on the face value. They actually did storm the capital, the security forces in place seemed ambivalent or perhaps actually complicit to some degree. Nevertheless, numerous people were injured or died.
And then there’s everything about the precedent it sets for next time, the excuses and defenses being made of it, and the ways in which those sympathetic to it may prepare to execute on the same idea again in the future, perhaps learning from prior lessons, and perhaps confident that they won’t face any legal exposure.
It’s a horrifying idea to have been allowed to take root in the form of real physical actions, which are then carried forward in culture to set the stage for future actions.
200? What planet do you live on? Watch a video of it. Read the January 6th Commission report.
On the day it happend I watched the videos being shared by the people participating amongst each other. There were tremendously more than 200 people.
Communism=Authoritarianism
I was taught in school the characteristics of authoritarianism and a couple weeks later, when i was being taught about communism, the same characteristics were said
Going a step further, the idea of authoritarian. Every ideology with a state relies on some type of authority to function, as a term it is an attempt at equating fascism and communism and serves as holocaust trivialization.
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They usually come packaged together. You’ll have a hard time naming democratic liberal communist countries/leaders.
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Liberal socialism is a thing. But yes, hard to have liberal values alongside the communist cancer.
But if you have a hard time naming democratic communist leaders, that’s largely because you’ve only been taught about the totalitarian ones.
I did say they usually go together.
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I base it on my feelings
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But a very easy time naming democratic communists. Even Stalin wasn’t a dictator, according to liberal historians such as Conquest who are experts on the soviet union. Socialism is more democratic than capitalism.
You’re right that they’re absolutely not the same, however at a nation state level, I’d be very surprised if you could point to any communist regime at any point in history that wasn’t also authoritarian or didn’t end up that way
That you catch a cold because you’re cold
While being cold isn’t the cause of a cold there are some links between being cold and transmission of the flu even beyond people huddling together inside.
The lipids the viruses attach to become more durable hence resilient, and multiple studies have shown that cold temperatures have a suppressive effect on the immune system.
https://uscvhh.org/news-and-stories/the-real-reasons-you-get-sick-when-its-cold-outside.html
IIRC there’s some evidence that cold temperatures weaken the immune system. Assuming it’s valid, that does mean that cold could be the deciding factor between contracting a cold or fighting if off.
Now obviously germ theory is correct and it takes external infection to catch a cold, but it’s a pretty safe bet you’re being more or less constantly exposed to COVID and the flu whenever you’re in an indoor public space.
It’s weird seeing a regular colloquialism in a sea of politically charged comments. This one really seemed to get people riled up.
Americans with their ‘greatest nation on earth’ charade.
It has a name: American exceptionalism. It’s used both by people who know it’s a lie and by people who believe it.
So it worked!
Most of what people believe about America’s history is post WWII mythmaking and revision. It’s a shame because the labor movement in America has a fascinating history, and we’re about to relive it.
The shoot-outs are going to be 100x better this time
Can’t wait to be teabagged by a Boston Dynamics robo dog after it murders my whole family for paying my Amazon Prime 2 days late!
Not even that. Politicians in even just the generation after Washington deified the framers of the Constitution, even when the remaining alive ones protested against it.
Jesus birthday is 25 December
Jebus is fake anyways, a story used by the romans to quell protests.
A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink.
“I have to admit, I’m always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.
“Thank you,” the KGB says. “We do our best but truly, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them.”
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. “Thank you friend, but you must be confused… There’s no propaganda in America.”
There’s no propaganda in America.
promptly fires everyone who criticizes Israel
…in Ba Sing Se
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People believe insane shit about North Korea because they heard other insane shit about North Korea.
“Democrats are liberal/progressive”
In reality, they’re pretty conservative.
The Overton Window
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
A concept where political discourse is slowly shifted to one side or another over time. For example conservatism.
Politics are talked about the right who move even further right, the centralists are moved to old right and the leftists are moved to the center … the old leftists are now seen as extreme and unacceptable while the far right are also unacceptable but gain some ground … everyone shifts one step to the right and now everything is more conservative.
The right shift is what is happening now … but it can happen and shift towards the left as well.
They are still liberal though but not progressives. Liberalism isn’t necessarily a left wing ideology.
A lot of leftists (and I hardly ever saw it before coming on Lemmy) use ‘Liberal’ to mean Classic or Neo Liberal - basically a synonym of capitalist… That’s not at all what it means in American politics, where it means the opposite of Conservative. If we used that definition, Conservatives would be called Liberals as well as Liberals being Liberals, which obviously makes no sense for US lingo. However, they both are Liberals in the neo/classic sense as most US Liberals aren’t calling for communism.
The conservatives are only liberal in the economic sense. They are the party of book banning, anti-abortion and anti-lgbtq. Liberalism is also about human rights and freedoms. But just because you think gays should be allowed to marry and acces to have an abortion should be a right that doesn’t put you left on the political spectrum or even make you a progressive. Since that is pretty much a centrist political position in the rest of the world. Most Democrats are liberal in the economic sense but also in the human liberty sense. But only a few Democrats in the house and senate can be truly called progressives. Since most Democrats are fine with the status quo and aren’t pushing society forward. They are just fighting of the attacks of the GOP
Right, I agree. The progressive side of the US is not fairly represented by Democrats nationally.
This sort of confusion is why I think we need to always define economic and social political positions separately rather than lump them together.
You’d need more than two parties for that.
Good
That’s not at all what it means in American politics
Two red scares and a cold war created an Orwellian memory hole such that Americans don’t even have the words anymore. It’s double-plus ungood.
Liberalism isn’t necessarily a left wing ideology.
It’s an inherently right wing ideology lol. They’re just conservatives that want/like to think they’re progressive.
Liberal economic theories beleive the free market is the best solution generally, but allow the free market to be intervened in or even entirely supplanted in cases of market failure or where significant social problems arise from private ownership. There is a lot of debate inside liberalism as to when a market has failed, or when a social issue requires intervention, which is why sometimes you will see centrist liberals and left liberals arguing. Just look at Canada with our Liberal Party, its a big tent party with a small social democrat rump(since most social Dems are NDP), a larger social liberal / left liberal group, as well as some centrist and “blue liberals” (these would be right liberals, who are harder to convince about market failures).
Liberalism can be progressive, especially when the main thrust of a liberal party is left liberal or social liberal. Some Liberal parties are progressive sometimes, then more centrist at others as members and the membership changes over the years (or often on the strength and leanings of their leader). All still liberalism.
Democrats are liberals. Republicans are too. Both of them are reactionary.
That’s only true if you use the international definition of “liberal”. In America, “liberal” means “left wing”. And we’re talking about American politics.
In America, “liberal” means “left wing”.
No it doesn’t. Widespread ignorance does not change objective reality. This sort of thinking is Hyperliberalism. Just because most Americans are politically illiterate doesn’t mean the definition is changed. 40% Americans also believe the entire universe is only 6000 years old.
If you ask an american political scientist to define “liberal” they will tell you the “international” definition. If you allow technical and scientific terms to be subjected to “language just evolves” you end up with a Tower of Babble type situation where different groups of people are unable to communicate with one another despite using the same language and society collapses.
If you ignore the actual usage of words then you’re speaking your own language and talking only with your own in-group bubble.
This was not a conversation about the political science term “liberal”. It is about lies told to everyone. We’re obviously discussing common usage.
We’re obviously discussing common usage.
Saying something is obvious doesn’t make it true. The only noun you use in your first comment is “Democrats” so how is this not a discussion about politics? I am having a discussion about politics and I’m going to do my best to use political terminology in its established scientific meaning not a niche dialect that you believe is “common use.”
The world is much bigger than the USA. Americans only make up 15% of the English speaking world. What you call “common use” is just “ignorant and wrong” to the rest of us.
By any civilized standard democrat politicians are far right extremists (a few token exceptions are closer to right or even center-right on some points, but they have little effect on the whole). Republicans are outright deranged lunatics, mixed with a worryingly increasing percentage of fascists.
Socially left, but not communist
The entire conservative party
communism has killed 100 million people
Stems from the black book of Communism which counts nazis killed by the Soviets, everyone killed by the nazis in the USSR, unborn children and even more absurd shit like that just to get to that number lmao.
If we count shit like that, Capitalism has killed billions.
Even using their numbers, if the choice is between 100 million people and every single living thing on the planet, communism sounds like a pretty good deal.
Comunism always sounds like a pretty good deal. UNFORTUNATELY IT’S LEADERS ARE ALWAYS CORRUPT
Doesn’t a rather large portion of that come from Mao Zedipshit’s Great Leap Forward?
If we count shit like that, Capitalism has killed billions.
Only if you don’t adjust for functioning existence lmao.
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You call this functioning?
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Ah yes, India, Haiti, and Myanmar. Definitely what people instantly think of when prompted for the average modern capitalist democracy rather than the us, uk, denmark, sweden, norway, germany, netherlands…cherry pick a bit harder and you might start making sense
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The problem with these counts is there is no way of making them look good, like lives saved due to “x”. How many people lived because the Soviets managed to eliminate all famines in their territory after that? A huge feat given their relative frequency beforehand.
And then you can blame countless deaths on capitalism, feudalism, slavery, but then do you normalize those numbers based on total world population?
What about blaming AK-47s? The police?
My point is that it’s a pointless metric that is only used to drum up support against some group of people, not a useful one for objectively understanding anything. It does away with all context, and replaces it with some inane number.
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Feel free to clarify your point
No they don’t.
But you’re just proving the trope asked about in the original post.
I think the point is that it’s difficult to attribute that to communism in any meaningful way where you’re comparing it to non-communism. Like if those 100 million people would have died anyway, how to do you say ‘it was communism that did it’ since maybe more would have died under the next most likely form of government that would have been in it’s place. How many people have died for Democracy, assuming that both world wars and countless other ones were fought to defend it.
Like if those 100 million people would have died anyway, how to do you say ‘it was communism that did it’
Ehhhh, because you can tie it directly to communist policies like collectivisation?
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Yeah, it’s wayyyyyy more
Well it’s at least 75 million so what’s another 25?
Those 25 can easily be added by deaths in Cuba venezuela and many more dictatorships with the comunism propaganda activated
That Israel is not a colonial state. All it’s founders defined it as a European colonial project. It was and is allied with all the colonial powers and projects like Britain, the US, apartheid south Africa, and Rhodesia. Its funding association was called the Palestine Jewish colonization association. It’s bank was called the Jewish colonial trust. The Jewish national fund and the Zionist project at large was from the beginning concerned with building segregated colonies.
First, lands were bought with foreign funding from feudal land lords, and their inhabitants were entirely dispossessed, kicked out. Then when awareness of the ultimate goals of the Zionist project crystalized and resistance against Palestinian dispossession mounted, the lands were ethnically cleansed by force and the people massacred. 700 to 800 thousand Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in one continuous military operation that spanned two years from 1947 to 1948.
Zionist leaders fully acknowledged that Palestinian demographics were a core issue to the Zionist project, that the Palestinian population had to be removed at any cost, which is exactly what Israel did. What lead to the Palestinians being defenseless in this situation? Colonial Britain abetted the formation of heavily armed Zionist militias with soldiers numbering in the tens of thousands. The arms of Britain’s colonial military presence were inherited by the Zionist forces that it supported. All this while Britain summarily excecuted any Palestinian found in possession of a firearm.
This is not to mention the enthusiastic support of european antisemites for the Zionist project, or its strict early opposition by antifascist jews.
The idea that Israel has any right to exist on Palestinian land is a lie that has been so heavily proliferated, it has to be debunked when it should be paid no consideration at all.
“You’re too much into politics”
Said by people who are unwilling to admit they’re on the wrong side. Or in a more extreme setting (like say, South Africa during apartheid), they’d most likely report you to authorities or outright even kill you.
Started getting into communism recently, and my brother spies on the stuff I look for, called me a paranoid, jobless loser (he is jobless himself), and that I should kill myself for being so miserable. By the way, I am a lower-middle class family from India, a far-right shit hole, with the highest unemployment rate (40% under 25 are jobless, 10.57% is the overall unemployment rate), unskilled college graduates, atrocity towards minorities, and on the very verge of turning into a theocracy.
Welcome to the team! May I ask what radicalized you?
It is the cumulation of experiences which made my stance shift towards left-leaning politics. One such incident in my childhood stayed with me, and made me a radical anti-capitalist, but not necessarily a socialist or communist - I am not even sure what those two terms are, apart from the two-to-three line definition on Wikipedia.
My dad wanted to procure some loan for his business. Well, this loan officer came to our place. My mom was dressed in one of those Indian-style nightgowns as he came to our house without informing prior - he wanted to inspect our place to ensure that he was lending money to the “right” type of people. He started berating and shouting at my mother, calling us slurs that are usually said for people living in the slums, denied the loan, telling my dad to not waste his time. In front of a ten year old. I could never forget that incident, and it often kept playing in my head, even when I grew up.
This made me think about these scums make a fuss when a common person tries to run a business, harass us when we don’t pay on time, refinance loans with shittier terms without our prior permission, but when capitalist scumbags like Vijay Mallya, Gautam Adani or Anil Ambani lose their capital, they bend their asses, willing to transfer all the loses onto the common folks. The entire system was rigged. The rich will remain rich, their children will virtue-signal us about how they work harder than us, and how they followed their “passion”.
Are you reading any communist texts or joining any communist parties?
Haven’t read a lot of text, but I’ve tried exploring around ideologies related to syndicalism. Also read some of the essays by @dessalines@lemmy.ml.
For now, I want to figure out a way to get a job in this brutal recession. I’m not thinking of joining political parties for now, because without basic necessities and needs, I’m basically handicapped. With just ₹7k in my account from my previous job, graduated-but-unemployed, and living with my parents, there’s not a lot of stuff I can do.
Maybe if it’s activism related to using my technical skills for union organization and labor’s right awareness, then I think I could be a part of that - perhaps, I could also make a living out of that, but I’d have to figure out a way to monetize that, and also need a team of folks from law and media. After reading the blog by Paul Biggar, I’m reconsidering the above idea.
If you’d like help with anything that can be offered from an Anglophone perspective (obviously you’re going to have better access than me to the robust and interesting material from Indian communists*), I or a ton of other people on my instance or lemmygrad would love to help, and we’ve got people from all over (I’m pretty sure including India, we just don’t get many “As an Indian” posts) who can offer their perspectives too.
*This isn’t just lip-service. Aside from what can be tied to movements like the Naxals or the people of Kerala, I think Utsa Patnaik has some very compelling writing.
America is the greatest country in the world. Only those who haven’t travelled much would believe that.
It is a libertarian’s dream country though. No where else is it so easy to get others to invest in your idea.
Really? What kind of barriers to investment exist in other democracies?
