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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • kugel7c@feddit.detoLefty Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.comLefty Nemesis
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    6 months ago

    I’m having a hard time understanding the perspective of someone who believes that lefties would benefit by having the world’s largest army and nuclear arsenal under a government backsliding all the way into theocratic authoritarianism.

    Well some leftists would loose a lot obviously, specifically those in or directly around the US, but fascist regimes are not very sustainable, and certainly loose the ability to ally and coerce over time.

    And This loss of ability to project power (by the largest and thus likely the most destructive institution of coercive power) is what I see as a critical step towards a communist or just any different way of economic and political organization on a global scale.

    I don’t want a facist US regime, I would never tell any leftists to advocate for one, but I would tell them to prepare or flee nonetheless because it is still likely, or at least possible that it happens (again).

    I’d much rather have a reasonably progressive US voluntarily give up power in good faith, curtail her own economic might to allow her citizens a good life and our shared world a sustainable economy and ecology but given that among many other titles, she also holds the title of the foremost petrostate, and at least one of the largest Tax heavens, in the world I unfortunately don’t really see that happening, I still hope for it, but as far as I understand powerful interests aligning and climate change, the world economy… it just doesn’t seem particularly likely.

    I’m in Germany so not anywhere extremely tied into the US, but at the same time both are imperial core, there is a lot of cooperation, I would likely feel a lot of the secondary effects, but I also believe perhaps naively that not all of the world would , blindly follow the US in it’s slow march towards fascism. And with each institution peeling of from US hegemony there is at least a chance to throw a big political lever in the rightish direction, whether it be the EU, IMF, Nato or whatever else, a movement that at the moment is blocked largely by US and perhaps wider western but also sometimes chinese or russian imperialist positions. And of course the Capital that these states (actually) represent.

    Like step one is a little putsch, step two is murdering all your political opponents, then it is time to invade neighbors to steal resources. Yes, the US is already invading countries to steal resources, no, I don’t think having an authoritarian cancelling voting will help reduce that any. What am I missing?

    All of this is already happening anyways, murdering political opponents internally as well as outside of the US,furthering climate change, destabilizing and undermining trust etc. again sliding into fascism is not what I want, but even a fascist US would be bound by physical, organizational, and social circumstances, and thus for the wider world likely less catastrophic than you might believe it’d be if you were raised or resided in the US.

    I can’t claim for certain that the US is having a Weimar moment, and I cant be certain that a US fascism in the modern era would be shorter and less gruesome, I also can’t say it’ll be better afterwards, but I feel all of these things to not be completely outrageous predictions, because as leftists probably should, I can try to interpret the historical Weimar moment, and the current political landscape…

    Just fuck it, ramp up climate change and war, get it over with, and pray socialism crawls out of the rubble?

    Well again, ramp up in war and climate change are already happening, and in my world the wars are already the 20th century ideas as well as their capital, lashing out against 21st century thinking, changes in circumstances, and the very real onset of this era of climate change scarcity that we are entering.

    So to some extent from my point of view yes, you don’t have to keep trying to be a democracy with institutions and foundational texts as well as family hierarchies from the 18th century, that were made and changed by your political enemies, you can fight for (but hopefully mostly against) the fascism that the powers at be try to impose upon you, but without just believing the popular vote, and the systems it enables, will save you here.

    If you crawl out of an actual civil war esque partial collapse as hardened syndicalists, or if you can get rid of FPTP and establish a democratic socialist party that is able to actually make international agreements in good faith, for me it mostly doesn’t matter. I’d prefer the second if I look at the human cost of both options, but because the first option I’d guess could be faster in implementation, and the result would be similar from an international perspective, I don’t completely hate it, very literally I could likely “live with it”, precisely because I likely won’t have to live under it, much more than anyone from the US could.

    Essentially I don’t identify with the US emotionally, I have almost no image of her institutions being good, so I can compartmentalize and write off that particular nation state much easier. For me a fascist or civil war ridden US that is short lived and likely reemerges with better bones might actually be very similar to one that transforms more amicably.

    I can just say suffering is going to be inevitable, but that the suffering to change things for the better, to make them work sustainably, to make them work for the people, is the one i hope Americans actually still strive toward deep down, because I by pure circumstance don’t need to suffer in that same way, I will suffer differently and for a different reason, fighting essentially the same fight sure, but from a different position with different levers to pull and different pressures to withstand.

    We had fascism here openly 80 years ago, it’s still here trying it’s hardest to grab power and survive, but perhaps obviously it’s fastest decent, its quickest downfall was almost the exact same time as it’s most emancipated period, in fact they followed each other in lockstep.


  • kugel7c@feddit.detoLefty Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.comLefty Nemesis
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    6 months ago

    While I agree largely with your conclusion that anti progressive ideas are pushed to undermine progressive spaces, I don’t really agree with how you get there and with the examples you choose to arrive at that conclusion. There obviously are actual bad actors, and actual hegemony to get these bad actors into being, but there is also a lot of real people, actually still learning about the topics, or just plainly with a different perspective on some of the issues that you might be discussing.

    For it to be an ideology that is self consistent leftism actually needs differences and disagreement, or said in another way: if we were to prescribe beliefs instead of trying to teach them we’d also just be trying to build our “own” authoritarian hegemony. I can invoke successes of or defend the CCP and the soviets just as I can invoke successes of the US or EU or India realizing that all states are fundamentally bad, still sometimes perhaps by accident they do good things. And that examples and mental shortcuts, as well as actual experiments that might be of a socialist nature, are just what they are argumentative tools.

    I’ve been called a tankie just because I see the downfall or backsliding of the US as good thing and don’t really accept that china would be as bad as the US has been for the last 40 years or so. Which is perfectly normal for someone who doesn’t really reap the benefits of US hegemony, and sort of just ranks authoritarian institutions by size(strength)(wealth) to arrive at a measure of subjective dislike.

    It’s almost similar to someone calling me a tankie because I purchase Pepsi instead of coca cola on that given day, when we all know I should make my own tea or at least just buy the supermarket/local brand to begin with.

    I don’t know where you are and what kind of people you meet on a regular basis but to me the simple and fast ways of understanding other people almost never hold true, most of us humans just lead to complicated lives to easily subjectify us. And honestly I wish most leftists would not try to subjectify other people to begin with.


  • kugel7c@feddit.deto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneSmoko rule
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    7 months ago

    German and potentially other train stations have smoking areas indicated by a yellow line on the ground, circling the area.

    They are frequently completely ignored with some people lighting their cigarette while the train they are exiting is still opening its doors.





    • Bring Me The Horizon | POST HUMAN SURVIVAL HORROR
    • YOASOBI | everything is post 2020
    • Paula Hartmann | everything is post 2020
    • Toe | 独演会 "DOKU-EN-KAI

    It’s a bit hard to find stuff that is new that I’ve actually listened to a lot, but it’s not because there isn’t new stuff just because I have no new music entering my rotation except from artists I already know, other media or friends recommendations. And music from other media often doesn’t end up being on any album.


  • Every political position mostly tries to define in which ways violence is to be used. Realising this and knowing power is already established before you were even born. Seeing violence being used against your oppressor(s) is often times the only thing we feel we can still hope for.

    Or from another perspective, is the war in Ukraine worth it for Ukraine or Russia, can you really say a war with so many deaths is preferable to being a russian subject, or an international embarrassment of the Russian state. Is the self determination of Palestinians really worth the terror and the war. We’re the PIRA justified in bombing London for their brother’s and sisters discrimination and deaths in Ireland. It’s ultimately all subjective, wether the violence of the system you fight against is bad enough you can bring yourself to fight.

    Nothing brings back anyone but as long as there are people who want to, and do turn us into their machines, we have to rely on our interpretation of that being wrong, and fight them for it.



  • Because they don’t have a perfectly fine business model. They get squeezed hard by both the oligarchs of music publishing UMG, Sony Warner who negotiate the price for the music. And from the other side by the tech giants google and apple who can cross service subsidize their own streaming.There exists essentially no space for them to make any profit in streaming music. So they have to go other places.

    The only reason they’ll probably exist for the foreseeable future is because the rights holders are able to use Spotify to have more negotiating power against Google and apple.







  • This is so absurd to me how can anyone disallow painting and drilling into walls of an apartment, I’m very glad that tenancy laws here basically say that if you rent a place you can do whatever you want with it, as long as reasonably it’s restore-able.

    For a lot of the younger folks in the EU if your rental contract tells you you can’t do something it’s probably bullshit. And even if it isn’t at worst you’ll lose your deposit.


    • Acerola - Video Game shaders and other digital art techniques
    • Andrewism - hopefull Philosophy / Politics
    • Eisenbahn in Ö, D, CH - Trains (in german)
    • carykh - AI and various
    • jan Misali - Conlang + various + Mashups
    • Marco Reps - Electronics and EE
    • Then & Now - History/Philosophy
    • NeverKnowsBest - Lengthy Video Game reviews/ History of Gaming
    • BobbyBroccoli - Science scandals
    • Applied Science - Various science and Eng
    • Asianometry - Semiconductor / Engineering / Taiwan / History / Economics (very frequent uploads)
    • RMTransit - Transit (NA focus)
    • Tom Nicholas- more politics
    • Junferno - Software Development in sarcastic weeb
    • Oliver Lugg - I don’t even know
    • People Make Games - Video Game Journalism

    I tried to only pick stuff <1M subs excluding game play and news.