Main Paineframe posted:

By that definition, any political reforms by definitions are also material conditions reforms, because increasing a group's political power also increases their ability to push for policies affecting their material conditions.

quote:

In the French and Russian Revolutions, material conditions were actually a side issue: the primary focus of both revolutions was around dismantling social and political barriers, typically a backlash against the extremely rigid class structures of feudalism.

quote:

In China, as far as I can tell, the initial 1911 revolution was primarily motivated by ethnic resentment against the Manchu elite and nationalistic resentment against foreign involvement in China, as well as a reaction to the failure of various attempts at political reform.

Main Paineframe posted:

In the French and Russian Revolutions, material conditions were actually a side issue: the primary focus of both revolutions was around dismantling social and political barriers, typically a backlash against the extremely rigid class structures of feudalism.

Bar Ran Dun posted:

Those are material conditions, too. Here’s a way think about it. Have you ever boarded an old battleship or destroyer? Like WWII era. They’ve got these metal placards posted around “Never forget material conditions”. Here they’re referencing the damage control state of the vessel. Very simplified it is: are the water tight doors open or are they shut? That’s the material conditions on a ship

Social and political barriers are open or shut doors. Those are real conditions that exist independently from and outside of one’s consciousness. They’re no less material conditions than the organization of a railroad, or a horizontal global supply chain.

Discendo Vox posted:

edit: god drat it, let's try a fifth loving time.

You said:

This has been demonstrated to be false. The people who associate with fascists do not do so on the basis of such rhetoric, and are not actually impacted by the economic arguments in question. This has been demonstrated repeatedly, and in the first half of the post you keep alluding to, you already acknowledged it. By internalizing the idea that this element of the rhetoric is a part of what makes it effective, you construct a scenario where there is a fascist appeal rooted in economic arguments, which means that actual arguments about economic policies offered by either fascists or by Democrats stop being relevant; your argument becomes false (because it misrepresents the actual basis of the fascist appeal), and unfalsifiable (because it cannot be corrected by reference to actual policies or outcomes). It also internalizes the fascist framing of economics as a function of status, the very conspiratorial redirection you identified. It is doing this despite already acknowledging that the fascist does not care about actual policy. It's internally incoherent and detached from reality on every level. You are saying "I know this isn't how it works, but it's how it works," and simultaneously, "I know they are lying, but they are telling the truth."

Nissin Cup Nudist posted:

Is racism a material condition?

cause everything comes down to racism in the end

Kanos posted:

I don't think acknowledging that economic framing is an integral part of fascist movements because it's effective for certain purposes is the same thing as believing said framing.

Kanos posted:

Economic framing allows them to obfuscate their true intentions and present them as legitimate to outsiders because being out and proud about their true intentions makes the initial hurdle of getting a hearing much higher.

Kanos posted:

If economic arguments had no purpose in fascist rhetoric, they wouldn't bother to make them. Trump wouldn't waste time blathering about reopening steel mills and coal mines and doing trade wars with China and talking about how he's an expert businessman who'll fix America's broken economy.

Kanos posted:

I'm essentially saying that economic concerns are an effective tool for fascists like dogwhistling is an effective tool for racists. Those who are already part of the movement understand what the movement is actually about, and those outside of the movement can credulously buy the bullshit at face value.

Nissin Cup Nudist posted:

Is racism a material condition?

cause everything comes down to racism in the end

Discendo Vox posted:

You have constructed a definition which is impossibly, uselessly, unfalsifiably broad. This is, of course, not a new problem with this line of rhetoric.

Bar Ran Dun posted:

Navy seems do well enough with it. Thus far I’m the only one that’s proposed a definition.

The conditions of reality as it actually exists outside our brains.

Edit : I guess what I’m saying is that when that outside reality can kill you, and it will on ships, one checks and rechecks what actual conditions really are.

Discendo Vox posted:

It has already been communicated to you, and you have already acknowledged, that the economic framing is not an effective part of the rhetorical framing of fascism. it's a pretense. You already acknowledged it is a pretense. It is not what makes the rhetoric effectve. You have done nothing to show that it is effective, and multiple users, multiple times, have explained that it is not the means by which people engage with fascism.

quote:

You are the only person who is accepting either the prevalence of this framing or its success. You are the person who has constructed and internalized this. Only you.

Let me make sure you understand what you are saying. Because Donald Trump wastes time blathering about something, you think it must be because it is effective? Why? Why do you think it is effective when you have already been presented evidence that it is not, and acknowledged that it is not?

Kanos posted:

Yes, it's a pretense, but pretenses are very important when you're attempting to get people to platform and listen to ideas that are generally considered abhorrent or beyond the pale. Understanding the infection vector is nearly as important as understanding the disease itself.

Kanos posted:

It's been pretty demonstrably effective, because this discussion started before I even entered it, has come up repeatedly in these threads in the past, and also appears frequently in the media(the aforementioned NYT Trump Safaris).

Staluigi posted:

very well done people

_{much like aaron}

Ms Adequate posted:

This one made me puff out my cheeks and exhale, drat. Like it's good, but holy poo poo

The Artificial Kid posted:

What’s been shown is that actually having low socioeconomic status doesn’t make you vote Trump.

That doesn’t mean that material concerns aren’t what’s being activated in people who shouldn’t need to be so worried about them but do and therefore vote Trump. It also doesn’t mean that those people don’t use the filled of materialist concerns as an excuse for doing what they want to do anyway.

The Artificial Kid posted:

But racism comes down to excusing the abuse of our-groups for materialistic purposes.

quote:

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel announces her resignation

WASHINGTON — Ronna McDaniel said Monday that she will step down next month as chairwoman of the Republican National Committee following former President Donald Trump's endorsement of a new slate of leaders to direct the party.

McDaniel's decision followed Saturday's South Carolina primary and came less than two weeks after Trump endorsed North Carolina GOP chairman Michael Whatley to be the next chairman of the RNC, his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to be co-chair and top campaign aide Chris LaCivita to be the party’s chief operating officer.

McDaniel's decision was first reported by The New York Times.

In a statement, McDaniel said it had been an "honor and privilege" to serve as chairwoman for seven years.

“Some of my proudest accomplishments include firing Nancy Pelosi, winning the popular vote in 2022, creating an Election Integrity Department, building the committee’s first small dollar grassroots donor program, strengthening our state parties through our Growing Republican Organizations to Win program, expanding the Party through minority outreach at our community centers, and launching Bank Your Vote to get Republicans to commit to voting early," she said.

“I have decided to step aside at our Spring Training on March 8 in Houston to allow our nominee to select a Chair of their choosing," she added. "The RNC has historically undergone change once we have a nominee and it has always been my intention to honor that tradition."

Trump hand-picked McDaniel after the 2016 election to serve as RNC chair as Reince Priebus left the post to become his first chief of staff at the White House. She was re-elected to a fourth term in January 2023, fending off challenger Harmeet Dhillon.

McDaniel, 50, was the second woman to lead the RNC. She previously was chair of the Republican Party in Michigan, where she oversaw Trump’s successful 2016 effort in the state.

Trump told Fox News this month that “some changes” were likely at the RNC when he was asked about McDaniel’s performance.

“I think she did great when she ran Michigan for me. I think she did OK initially in the RNC,” Trump said in the interview. “I would say right now there’ll probably be some changes made.”

Scrutiny of McDaniel’s leadership at the RNC ramped up among party activists after the midterm elections in 2022, when Republicans lost several critical Senate and governors’ races. Grassroots activists and conservative influencers upset with McDaniel’s leadership coalesced around Dhillon’s effort to unseat her. But McDaniel offered a show of force ahead of the party’s winter meetings last year, unveiling a list of more than 100 RNC members who backed her for another term, and she easily defeated the challenge.

Criticism of McDaniel’s leadership is focused on her handling of party finances and grassroots efforts. The party’s latest disclosure with the Federal Election Commission showed it was facing a cash crunch, with less than half as much money in the bank as the Democratic National Committee reported at the end of 2023.

Speaking to reporters in Beaufort, South Carolina, last week, Lara Trump was asked whether the RNC would help to pay Trump’s legal bills as he faces prosecution in four jurisdictions across the country.

“Well, I said every penny will go to making sure Donald Trump will be the 47th president, to ensuring that we have great candidates to expand our lead in the House and to take back the Senate," she said, adding about providing funding for his legal expenses, "I actually don’t know where they stand on that."

"Well, I think that his legal bills have already been covered at this point," she said when pressed further.

LaCivita told reporters later in the week that the RNC will not use party funds to cover Trump-related legal expenses.

Calls for change at the RNC ramped up ahead of the party's winter meetings in Las Vegas this month. Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and a co-founder of the right-wing group Turning Point USA who led the charge to oust McDaniel last year, held a nearby conference dubbed the "Restoring National Confidence" summit — a clear shot at the party.

Some saw the focus on McDaniel's performance as a way for conservatives to redirect anger on the right over Trump's recent electoral failings, particularly in the midterms, after he elevated a number of candidates who embraced his false claims about the 2020 election and ended up losing key statewide races in swing states.

Behind closed doors last winter, two RNC members working on the party's internal review of what went wrong during the previous year's elections argued over whether the results had more to do with bad candidates or a lack of financial backing from the RNC. Tyler Bowyer, an RNC committeeman from Arizona who is also a top Turning Point executive and spoke at the group's summit last week, argued it was the money, while Henry Barbour, an RNC committeeman from Mississippi who co-chaired the autopsy effort, argued the losses were because of candidate quality.

Ultimately, two people familiar with the party's thinking told NBC News last year that a final report was unlikely to be made public, though a draft copy was leaked, and it did not mention Trump.

After Trump secured commanding GOP victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, it was time for the party to rally around him as the "eventual nominee," McDaniel told Fox News following the New Hampshire primary.

Days later, a Trump ally and RNC committeeman proposed a resolution to be considered at the party's winter meetings that would declare Trump the party's presumptive nominee. But after pushback, Trump himself called for the resolution to be scrapped.

Trump's rival, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, seized on the short-lived effort, referring to it repeatedly on the trail in South Carolina. She has said it showed the party is "clearly not" an honest broker.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The party is also cancelling a planned "election autopsy" to determine what went wrong in 2020 and 2022 for the party.

FlamingLiberal posted:

The only thing I will remember about her is how she stopped using the Romney name because Trump loving hated Romney’s guts

Angry_Ed posted:

Another in the long line of people who debased themselves for Trump and got nothing in return for it.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Material concerns and racism are not mutually exclusive motivating forces.

If you look at the demographics of trump supporters they're mostly relatively well off, older people who also are for some reason or other disappointed with their lives and economic situation. They often shouldn't be, but that doesn't make their sense of grievance less real, only less justified, which is not the same thing.

People who have actual problems tend to be less likely to fall for bullshit solutions and prefer real attempts to address their problems. People who are whining about fake problems are more likely to fall for con artists peddling fake solutions.

Oracle posted:

Wow the bolded is utter bullshit. I cannot tell you how many people with real problems fall for con artists peddling fake solutions for real problems, from ‘invest in bitcoin to get rich quick’ to ‘I just got diagnosed with cancer I’m going to go on this fruitatian diet instead of have surgery and chemo’ to ‘I’ll just buy a ton of lottery tickets to solve my financial problems because someone has to win.’

haveblue posted:

I'm just going to reflexively assume that it's not true that Nixon sold $18 million of documents back to the feds, so what's the real story there?

haveblue posted:

I'm just going to reflexively assume that it's not true that Nixon sold $18 million of documents back to the feds, so what's the real story there?

quote:

WASHINGTON —

The federal government has agreed to pay $18 million to the estate of Richard Nixon to settle claims that the Watergate tapes and other presidential materials were improperly seized by the government in 1974 without compensation.

The out-of-court agreement, climaxing a five-month civil trial that ended last year, would result in $6 million in improvements and expansion for the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda, Calif., and paves the way for copies of his White House tape recordings and papers eventually to be made available at the Orange County facility, officials said.

Main Paineframe posted:

Velocity Raptor posted:

You're instinct looks to be right. They didn't pay $18m to get the documents back. It was a settlement for claims that the Watergate tapes and other materials that were seized without compensation. And even then, 6m of that was for improvements to the Nixon Library.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jun-13-mn-40455-story.html

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Yeah, addressing material concerns is prophylaxis and prevention, not cure, for fascism. It also, you know, helps people, which is nice.

quote:

“Consolidated corporate power is the biggest problem that we’re facing right now in our politics,” said Matt Stoller, research director at the anti-monopoly group American Economic Liberties Project, who regularly works with populist figures on the right, including APP. He said divisions within both parties about antitrust changes mean that supporters “have to cobble together a majority.”

quote:

One progressive antitrust advocate, who requested anonymity to discuss the dynamic candidly, said that given they have the same goal as APP on this issue, “there’s no reason to be oppositional to them out of spite.”

quote:

The American Principles Project is one of the only right-leaning groups agitating in favor of overhauling trust-busting laws to rein in Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple. In theory, that would make it a useful ally to Democrats who need bipartisan support to revamp U.S. antitrust laws.

But the group, known as APP, first and foremost brands itself “America’s top defender of the family,” lobbying in favor of bills that ban transgender girls from participating in high school sports and prevent trans children from receiving any type of gender-affirming care. (Medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, support certain gender-affirming care for adolescents such as counseling or providing medication that delays puberty.)

APP President Terry Schilling has called pediatricians who provide gender-affirming care “groomers,” meaning pedophiles, and referred to transgender women as “ biological males who believe they are women.” The group has also delved into racial issues, describing the Black Lives Matter movement as a “rhetorical Trojan horse” pursuing “an identiarian race-based caste system” for the U.S.

quote:

Another Democratic strategist who works on antitrust issues said the Democrats need support from populist Republicans to push bills across the finish line, so “intel sharing across a variety of groups of varying ideologies is vital.”

Discendo Vox posted:

It has already been communicated to you, and you have already acknowledged, that the economic framing is not an effective part of the rhetorical framing of fascism. it's a pretense. You already acknowledged it is a pretense. It is not what makes the rhetoric effectve. You have done nothing to show that it is effective, and multiple users, multiple times, have explained that it is not the means by which people engage with fascism.

Paracaidas posted:

This is all tl;dr for "do material conditions motivate political and movement behavior?" is an interesting enough question but "no war but class war" "no topic but class topic" feeds in to the goal of garbage across the political spectrum by leaving the actual lies - about accommodating and making common cause with bigots and fash - accepted or, at best, unchallenged.

GlyphGryph posted:

Im not sure why working with bad people towards a good end is inherently bad, the way you seem to feel it is? That is something literally anyone who improved things politicially has done. I can understand the important of limiting how much you empower their ability to so unrelated bad stuff, and why intelligence sharing could be a problem, but productive effort towards mutual good goals should be the goal, since you're never gonna get anything done by limiting yourself to working with people you agree with on everything.

quote:

“It doesn’t make sense to work with someone that doesn’t share our values and doesn’t share our goal,” said Jeremie Greer, co-founder and executive director of economic rights group Liberation in a Generation. “I don’t think we’re fighting for the same thing.” Greer argued that the push for antitrust reform is essentially about increasing equality and strengthening democracy — and a group fighting against LGBTQ and minority rights is fundamentally opposed to that work

Blumenthal's press release posted:

“Our bill provides specific tools to stop Big Tech companies from driving toxic content at kids and to hold them accountable for putting profits over safety,” said Blumenthal. “Record levels of hopelessness and despair—a national teen mental health crisis—have been fueled by black box algorithms featuring eating disorders, bullying, suicidal thoughts, and more. Kids and parents want to take back control over their online lives. They are demanding safeguards, means to disconnect, and a duty of care for social media. Our bill has strong bipartisan momentum. And it has growing support from young people who’ve seen Big Tech’s destruction, parents who’ve lost children, mental health experts, and public interest advocates. It’s an idea whose time has come.”

quote:

Well, there are a couple of things, of course, protecting minor children from the transgender and this culture and that influence. And I would add to that watching what’s happening on social media.

And I’ve got the kids online safety act that I think we’re going to end up getting through, probably this summer. This would put a duty of care and responsibility on the social media platforms.

And this is where children are being indoctrinated. They’re hearing things at school and then they’re getting onto YouTube to watch a video. And all of a sudden this comes to them, um, and they’re on Snapchat, or they’re on Instagram and they click on something and the next thing you know, they’re being inundated with it.

quote:

“I view [KOSA] as a blank check for Attorneys General to be able to intimidate in any way that they can,” Philips told Jezebel. “They wouldn’t even need to necessarily pass this [state] legislation if you give them this tool,” she said, referring to proposals in Texas and South Carolina.

Galperin agreed that sites are likely to over-censor or “comply in advance” in order to avoid lawsuits. “To people who say, ‘Oh, surely the platforms will not do this,’ I recommend taking a look at the way that platforms have responded to SESTA/FOSTA,” Galperin said. She’s referring to the 2018 bills Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which were ostensibly meant to fight trafficking but resulted in the censorship of sex workers.

Philips also made the comparison to SESTA/FOSTA: “Sex workers in this case are calling attention to KOSA for the same reasons—they’re saying that this is going to be a tool for censorship and I believe them. We should believe them. They are proof and have been on the ground trying to call attention to how bipartisan efforts to censor the internet have affected the most marginalized people on the internet.”

KOSA “in some ways is more of a threat,” said Venzke. “Whereas SESTA/FOSTA tied much of its liability to federal criminal law, there is nothing in KOSA that so limits the legislation’s scope.” KOSA is about mitigating harms from anxiety and depression, which is extremely broad and subjective: “The portions of the duty of care are untethered to any particular legal definitions.”

Cimber posted:

Can someone explain to me why the media reports that when Trump scores 60 percent of the primary votes its an amazing victory for him, but if Biden doesn't score 90 percent he's washed up and it's game over for the democrats?

AsInHowe posted:

Because the media wants a horserace, and Biden is unpopular among liberal momeyed interests.

AsInHowe posted:

Because the media wants a horserace, and Biden is unpopular among liberal momeyed interests.