Seeing all these Teslas and dealerships being vandalized, I’m glad the far left is doing something productive.
Good trouble, as John Lewis called it.
Is this sarcasm?
Nope.
If the Far Left graduated from not firebombing Walmarts to burning down random people’s Teslas, there are many adjectives I would consider using, but “productive” is not one of them.
You guys can think what you want.
Vandalizing corporate property of a fascist billionaire is a better act for the far left than helping Trump get elected by sitting out the election/voting Stein, then going on social media and demanding everyone pretend they are morally superior because they support Islamic fascism.
Just to reiterate, normally the far left are doing everything they can to embrace and promote fascism.
Whether they are sitting out election or voting third party to make it easier for fascists to win elections in the west.
Or encouraging and promoting Islamic fascism
Or encouraging mass immigration from the middle east and Africa into Europe, which leads to a resurgence of fascism.
normally the far left is doing everything they can to promote fascism. Its nice to see the far left finally try to take on fascism in the form of opposing Tesla.
[quote=“Wesley_Clark, post:1, topic:1014679, full:true”]
So the center left would be people like Sanders, AOC, Warren.
The far left would be socialists and communists.
I keep hearing the far left say that liberals (the center left) hate them because of how effective and pure they are. But I’m not seeing it in my personal life. The far left from what I’ve seen has been taken over by campism and communal narcissism. [/quote]
“Effective and pure” at what? Destroying their societies?
“Far” anything never accomplishes much good because, almost by definition, they are so extreme in their views as to be completely intolerant of any dissention or contrary opinion. Which then usually means they must resort to violence to achieve their goals.
Ideologically pure.
I admit I haven’t heard them claim to be effective, though. Quite the opposite; what I usually hear from the far left is talk about how omnipotent capitalism is and how nothing can be done but wait for the World Revolution to just happen all by itself.
The far leftists I’ve seen seem to talk endlessly about how liberals are sell outs and the far left are the ones actually accomplishing things. However I haven’t seen them actually accomplish much in the real world.
Someone upthread mentioned how they are helping to organize some labor unions, which is good. It just seems like most of what the far left do nowadays is talk about what amazing people they are while supporting fascism. They aren’t actually making the world a better place.
This. They are just as authoritarian as the right wing. Consider Hitler and Stalin as an obvious historical example. The only difference between the far right and the far left is that they have a difference in preference for who they want as the dictator.
Or they are just wildly impractical utopians with zero idea on how to actually create their utopia. I know far left people who by all appearances genuinely oppose authoritarianism; however, they consistently fall back on some variation of “the One True Way is so obviously and factually superior that everyone will embrace it forever with no need for coercion once Evil Capitalism no longer prevents it”. Basically a retread of the old “the state will wither away” claim from the USSR.
Human societies don’t work like that of course, but they don’t believe in human nature either.
In reality (as I’ve pointed out to them), what would actually happen in a socialist revolution is that they’d be unceremoniously shoved aside (or worse) by the authoritarians (which is in fact what has historically happened to the anarchist wing). Both because the authoritarians are better organized, and because you can’t actually get everyone to live according to the One True Way - any One True Way - without forcing them.
Its not just that they support left wing authoritarianism like China or Venezuela, they support right wing fascism too.
Sitting out the 2024 election and/or voting 3rd party helped the fascist Trump get elected.
Islamist movements like Hamas are right wing fascist movements and the far left are supportive of far right wing Islamic extremists. They are just brown skinned, arabic and islamic fascists as opposed to white skinned, western and christian fascists.
The far left encourage immigration from the middle east and Africa into europe, which is causing issues and leading to far right wing parties growing in number in power all over the EU to resist the immigration. Far right parties are winning big in Europe in large part due to immigration from nations where minority rights, separation of church/state, attitudes about crime, etc are different.
They fuck everything up they claim to stand for. Where are the far leftists from the 1920s who got hired at factories just so they could form labor unions, or who provided free legal council to black people people being railroaded by the legal system?
This is also what happened in Iran in 1979. A coalition of Islamic extremists, democracy activists, leftists and students overthrew the Shah.
The democracy activists, leftists and students thought they’d get a democracy. instead the Islamists just tortured, killed, imprisoned and terrorized them while cementing power, and now 46 years later Iran is still a far right wing theocracy.
Were those guys really the far left, even when considering the different time? When I think of the far left from the 1920s*, I think of the Bolsheviks and Josef Stalin, or Mao Zedong and the formation of the CCP. Compared to Stalin and Mao, guys like Eugene Debs, Samuel Gompers, WEB Dubois, and Marcus Garvey weren’t far left.
Regarding immigration to Europe from Africa and the Middle East, I’m not familiar with the exact details. Is your position that the immigrants vote for far right candidates, or that the ethnic Europeans already on the right get pushed further to the right in reaction to the immigrants?
*. ETA. Or as you point out, the revolutionaries in Iran in 1979. Or Cuba in the 1950s. And so on. In other words people who use the gun rather than the ballot box to bring about their desired changes.
Lol, that was a fun day. Twitter leftists are still salty about that tweet, and still not escaping the allegations that they are all talk and no action. (To be fair, this is a good thing.)
It would nice if they could find something a little more constructive to do than keying cars belonging to people who just wanted to help the environment. But yeah, they haven’t had a great track record of late.
Can’t really blame the far-left for braindead immigration policies in Europe, though: that’s supported by every major party, hence the increasing portion of voters turning to the far-right.
Also known as the Red-Green-Brown alliance.
The term “red–green–brown alliance”, originating in France in the 2000s, refers to the alliance of leftists (red), Islamists (green), and the far right (brown).[1][2][3] The term has also been used to describe alleged alliances of industrial union-focused leftists (red), ecologically-minded agrarians (green), and the far right (brown).
I would expect the (far?) left, and socialist and communists, to be in favour of worker’s rights, liberal initiatives, against capitalism, etc., and other good things. Calling oneself a leftist does not grant anyone a pass on violence, terrorism, teaming up with fascists and authoritarians, or any of that stuff. I hopefully want to say people can see through that tactic.
I want to point out that “socialism” is pretty mainstream (maybe not in the U.S. though), but even more radical movements like anarchists are able to successfully and productively (relative to their small numbers) take part in politics and governance without forcing, or attempting to force, anyone to do anything in a violent revolution scenario.
Anyone teaming up with far-right-wing theocrats should know better. Stereotypical caricature anarchists burn down churches, by the way. But consider the recent example of Gaza where the radical leftist Palestinians, who really, really hate Islamists, had common cause to join them in fighting the Romans, I mean, the Israelis.
People should, yes; but instead they tell themselves that “The theocrats won’t really do all the awful things they say they’ll do if they get into power.”
(spoiler: They will)
That may have been me. Honestly the Wobblies are exceptions which prove the generalization. Sure, they are constructive AFAICT. But the IWW is also a sliver of the far-left sliver. Supporting them involves actual work as opposed to shouting.
Anarcho-syndicalism is also awesome, so awesome it’s basically dwindled to almost nothing. Almost! Section 8 Chicago is sometimes referred to as anarcho-syndicalist for example:
Section 8 Chicago is the Independent Supporters’ Association for the Chicago Fire mens soccer team, and encompasses a growing number of affiliate supporters groups and independent Fire fans. The vision of the ISA is to unite all Chicago Fire fans, to create a dominant in-stadium force unseen in any American team sport, and to establish a home-field advantage wherever the Chicago Fire play.
See? They’re still around.
One thing the “far left”–difficult to define, as this thread shows–does is offer a radical criticism of capitalism and the state. It’s the difference between saying “my boss is a jerk” and “capitalists fire people, lower wages, move production off-shore, enshittify their products, buy politicians and thus exert considerable control over the state, and generally act they way they do because the logic of the system compels them to, not because they’re jerks.” That is useful when you ask, as Muley does in The Grapes of Wrath, “Then who DO we shoot?” https://youtu.be/7JEYHczRar8?si=RsL37cCxNOT9ruhE
Or more realistically, figure out which side of the fence you’re on and who’s there with you and what to do.
And let me try again to make the point that there is a big different between the “far left” and the authoritarian left. Some overlap, yes, but only some, and not nearly as much as some people assume in this thread. People are confusing militant, radical, and authoritarian, and ends and means. It is entirely possible, and common, for one to be on the far left and deeply committed to democratic processes, indeed, to advocate for a much more democratic system than we have today.