Did you notice, though, that basically all of that agreement was in the abstract.
Who supports the notion that this is happening in anything resembling a widespread fashion?
Who’s even pointing to Dopers other than @Der_Trihs as exemplifying the hysterical behavior that you’re criticizing?
Who thinks there is a meaningful equivalence between @Der_Trihs 's reach and influence and that of Laura Loomer?
And who’s substantiating the argument that this Chimerical hysteria is having a deleterious effect on people’s actions to protest, resist, stand up, or speak out?
Right, because this thread has been all about Der Trihs alone saying that plans for genocide, slavery, and nuclear war are real and everyone else in the thread telling Der Trihs he’s wrong.
Yeah, that’s what this really comes down to. It’s not so fucking hard to say, “You’re right, DerTrihs is a deranged lunatic incel, no one should be listening to him”. Instead we have the same people defending his views out of one side of their mouth while claiming to have denounced him out the other.
I don’t think that’s an accurate summary of the opposing view at all. I think most people think Der Trihs is rather, ah, over-enthusiastic in his predictions of genocide and nuclear war. However, I also think most people think that while predictions of Nazi-style gas chambers and ovens genocide are at least premature and actually pretty unlikely, the precursors to some sort of ethnic cleansing-type genocide are already in place, and it’s not actually really over the top at all to sound warnings about that. There are already concentration camps. There are already mass detentions and deportations without legal review. There are already military units being used to intimidate the population. It’s not hysteria to point that out, or to warn that the groundwork is in place for it to get much, much worse.
I maintain my support for my first post in this thread. I think that this board has not paid enough attention to fighting fascism and winning the Senate in 2026. That implies appealing to moderate voters and swing voters, whom I and this board disagree with.
I haven’t gotten sucked into this back and forth, because I’m trying to lead by example and create the sort of threads that I think are worthy of discussion. Let’s call that a mixed success (IOW procrastination wins again).
I’ve only skimmed this thread, but I respect the views of @Little_Nemo and think he is one of the best posters on this board, top 30 on my list. While I’m here, I’ll also endorse the conservative @Sage_Rat who is sharp enough to grasp that Trump is a real problem.
I think some of the stalwart lefties here are not as helpful as they think they are. Oddly, I’ve warmed up to @Der_Trihs ; if anything Trumpism has vindicated parts of his POV.
ETA: Me: we should be fighting fascism harder, which means appealing to moderates and swing voters in 2026. Lefties don’t take the fight against fascism seriously enough: if they did they would be crafting their rhetoric to appeal to moderates and swing voters. They are a lot like Republicans who claim to care about the budget deficit, but won’t consider tax hikes. If you really value something, you are willing to consider tradeoffs and make sacrifices. Otherwise you are just babbling.
Letting the extremists do their ranting in the name of unity can be dangerous. Look at the Republicans. Fifty years ago, they were a respectable political organization. But then they decided to let the right wing extremists have a voice. They figured letting these extremists in would add some strength to the party.
The problem is the extremists can shout louder than anybody else. If you let them in so they can speak with you, they end up speaking for you. During the last few decades, we’ve seen the dwindling number of old school Republicans looking with dismay at the new wave of people taking over the party. The downward slide ends up with Donald Trump and the magas.
Extremists, left or right, aren’t interested in unity. Their goal isn’t to belong to the party. They want to control the party and purge out anybody who isn’t a fellow true believer.
Right now, the crisis is how the Republican party is controlled by extremists. And we need to fight those right wing extremists. But the solution is not to encourage left wing extremists.
You mean the 75% of democrats that already do think that we should not help the IDF continue with what amounts to genocide in Palestine?
Also: Most Americans, even Republicans are now more in favor of immigrants thanks to what the right wing extremists are doing now with the immigrant population.
91% Democrats, 79% independents, and 64% of the Republicans are now in favor of immigrants because they are not stupid. They can see when an idea they supported (deport undocumented criminals) is turning into a nightmare for their own communities.
Some people are weirdly obsessed with me, but no; there’s no comparison. All this ranting from certain people about me misses an important point: I don’t matter. I’m a random guy on the internet, I have no following and no interest in acquiring any. Loomer on the other hand is an entirely different matter.
@Little Nemo I’ll note is doing exactly what they are accusing others of doing; diverting people from what’s actually important by focusing on things that don’t matter. Focusing on me like I’m the leader of some movement or an influential advisor instead of a random guy with no support while downplaying what people with genuine power are doing and saying? That’s them diverting attention from important issues to irrelevancies, just like he’s trying to claim other people are doing.
I’m not especially concerned. The center-left part of the Democratic Party grew in strength starting in the late 1980s. Ranters have little sway. There’s a reason conservatives go after ethnic study professors in middling universities: there just aren’t that many wackos on the Dem side. Personally I think we need a few more of them, though this is a matter of calibration.
Wake me up when a Dem wacko gets elected to Congress. AOC and Bernie aren’t wackos: they understand the concept of compromise. The Freedom Caucus, OTOH, is brimming with wackos.
Anyway, the left-of-center has strong anti-bodies against extremism in the US. Areas right-of-center have been taken over by extremisists. It’s a striking contrast. I agree with the general point that extremists must be monitored.
ETA above, Der Thrihs: Yeah, that’s part of why I wandered away from this thread.
The far left is not only powerless but from all I’ve heard from them over the years doesn’t believe there’s any point in even trying to engage with the democratic process; “electoralism” they call it. They think the system is rigged and that victory at the ballot box is impossible, and that nothing but a world revolution will get them into power. Which they think will just inevitably happen if they wait for it; they really remind me of certain Evangelical Christians waiting for the Rapture to be honest.
Getting
: some people to engage in a discussion about, and
: some people to agree about
: some points, and
: to some degree
: with @Der_Trihs, and
Getting large numbers of the huddled Dope masses to stand in unified and vociferous opposition to the more extreme of his positions
are pretty much two ends of an odd continuum, but it totally excludes the middle – the middle where it seems like the overwhelming majority of us, much less US Democrats, much less US Democrats in power are.
You also cherry picked the issues I raise in that post, presumably going after the argument you thought would be the the easiest to refute (one definition of the Straw Man Fallacy).
Which, in aggregate, is part of why I have so much difficulty agreeing with your fundamental premise.
I’ve started and stopped so many replies to this thread I’ve lost count. But this is part of the core dilemma, isn’t it? Against determined opposition, how do you fight fascism (or any high level system) without getting people who don’t care that much about it on board enough to stand up against the determined opposition? Do you do that by getting them equally passionate about your mission to fight fascism (or whatever high level system it is), or do you do that by finding what will motivate them to stand up and fight, and then convince them that that’s also what you’re fighting for (which may or may not be 100% accurate)?
If I look at the OP through that lens, I’d say that choosing either path will motivate some, and maybe un-motivate others. Neither path is perfect, or guaranteed to get results, and probably both need to be happening at the same time, even though there might be some contradictory arguments between the two. That’s the messy nature of building alliances/coalitions.
I don’t think that leftists don’t take the fight seriously enough… I think that there is a faction who believe that they have a moral imperative to only build coalition by convincing people to be equally passionate about the things they are passionate about, and for the exact same reasons.
My son is quite a bit further left than I am. He is very unhappy about what is going on in the country, but I think believes that our blind support of israel and our continued enabling of the genocide there makes the US’s problems less urgent? It doesn’t seem to matter which party is in control, we continue to support the slaughter of thousands of non- combatants.
He does vote and votes for dems so far, but he feels real pain when he sees the misery and death of children in Palastine. I’m with him on that.
As I’ve said before there is no functional, “left” in this country. There is barely a center. Corporate interests, money in politics, enabling by a corrupt scotus majority, and a supine democratic leadership, has pulled the “center” so far right progressivism may as well be dead.
All the advice to the leftists boils down to “but you have to appeal to people to your right.”
Literally no one is telling anyone that they have to appeal to anyone to their left.
They seem to assume that all potential Democratic voters are either already locked in or so-called “swing voters.” The idea that there are people on the left who are not voting, or voting third party, but could become Democratic voters—for some reason, no one will consider that.
On a different thread I made the point that it was like that in the past:
That cartoon was originally in color, a modern version would be to point what a “shameful Nazi-cosplayer Trump is” cartoon for the less sophisticated, English and Spanish (or other languages) for the locals, Legal and more grounded criticism against the authoritarian for the intellectuals. But in any form, the message is clear.
Don’t take my quote to mean that I entirely disagree with Der Trihs. I do believe that we’re up against the same forces of society that always tend to bring slavery, genocide, and totalizing war. These are often outcomes of fascists because fascists are terrible people who are terrible at governance and statecraft, so they tend to reach for solutions that lead to the same disastrous outcomes.
Where I disagree is the usefulness of leaning too hard on the ultimate outcomes of fascism. The proximate battle is to prevent Trump from gaining more power, and from abusing the system, and from taking office for another term. Why? Because he’ll tend toward all sorts of horrible outcomes. But I think it’s ill-advised to base the rhetoric on horrible outcomes that people have been desensitized to since the Bush era, even these outcomes are closer than they’ve ever been.
I’m a little further left than my wife. But we are both moderate and progressive. And desire prison for Trump.
The genocide that I’ve been talking about though is against Hispanics. Things are such a mess that I can’t keep an eye on all the bouncing balls. That, though is part of the fascists plan.
SCOTUS is gone for years. Congress won’t do a thing. The best plan for a lot of people seems to be - hide.
