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some plague rats posted:Do you feel that this single FBI briefing you went to before Obama was even elected is representative of the current priorities and activities of the security state? I do a lot of sitting in on various a “safety”briefings at a couple of different levels and talk to other academy grads regularly. A simpler explanation than: federal government conspiracy to undermine leftists is : lotta fascist city and state level cops.
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Jun 13, 2022 02:50
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also right wing 'vigilantes' and militia guys who are usually literally friends with or relatives of those same cops
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Jun 13, 2022 02:51
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Herstory Begins Now posted:You think that the cia or the fbi or something is the reason why left wing politics have failed to take off in recent years (outside of a handful of younger representatives and, depending on what day of the week it is, bernie sanders)? A better question would be, when did those agencies stop meddling with left wing groups? After COINTELPRO? After the contras? After the Iraq War? After Bill Barr sent out a hit squad to assassinate that guy in Lacey?
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Jun 13, 2022 02:53
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Herstory Begins Now posted:so the dnc is making leftists infight? how? By making sure they never take power
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Jun 13, 2022 02:53
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the white hand posted:A better question would be, when did those agencies stop meddling with left wing groups? After COINTELPRO? After the contras? After the Iraq War? After Bill Barr sent out a hit squad to assassinate that guy in Lacey? 9/11 basically, then it largely coasted along with a blip around 2012 until roughly may/june 2020, which you'll note was just 3 months before Reinoehl was murdered by the police
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Jun 13, 2022 02:55
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Yinlock posted:There was also the extremely embarrassing failed Venezuelan coup attempt Or Honduras, or Bolivia, or Cuba Tbh it just seems like the argument being made here is "well, the US government may have strangled the left for most of its history, but it stopped at some point that I will not really articulate. The left is now not breathing because the left doesn't know how to breathe. Also if the left showed signs of life, the government would, for some reason, not immediately resume strangling it"
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Jun 13, 2022 02:56
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Leftist groups are almost universally tiny and just do not currently exist at a scale that the federal government gives two fucks about. One of the things that came out during the blm protests was some FOIA'd DHS documents where they were admitting that agencies knew basically zilch about left wing groups in the US, either in abstract or in terms of humint. Ironically after ~june 2020 that probably changed somewhat, but left wing groups remained literally a single tiny bulletpoint tacked on at the end of various fed domestic threat assessments. I didn't say that all of the infighting is due to the government, just that it is a tactic that they have used. I even said that historically, leftists fight amongst themselves quite a bit. 
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Jun 13, 2022 02:57
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Herstory Begins Now posted:9/11 basically, then it largely coasted along with a blip around 2012 until roughly may/june 2020, which you'll note was just 3 months before Reinoehl was murdered by the police In other words, when there was a big protest movement that needed to be suppressed?
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Jun 13, 2022 02:58
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theCalamity posted:I didn't say that all of the infighting is due to the government, just that it is a tactic that they have used. I even said that historically, leftists fight amongst themselves quite a bit. yeah that's reasonable and is basically how I see it as well. the white hand posted:In other words, when there was a big protest movement that needed to be suppressed? Yes exactly, I'm suggesting that they're reactive and not proactive. Left wing groups were not sufficiently on their radar to even be proactive towards for the vast majority of the last 20 years.
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Jun 13, 2022 03:01
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Yinlock posted:There was also the extremely embarrassing failed Venezuelan coup attempt oh whatever could you mean? The brave interim president of venezuela was engaged in street fighting for his homeland today! https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1535995488775831553
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Jun 13, 2022 03:02
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Jarmak posted:The cold war ended 30 years ago. You keep talking about not caring about process and only results, but when it comes to leftists actually achieving any results it's all about how the process is unfair. Yeah, one of the underhanded tactics the US used against the Soviet Union was the whole Iran-Contra affair which flooded black neighborhoods with crack, something that is still felt to this day. Which led to a host of other pervasive and systematic issues such as over-policing, mass incarceration, welfare cuts, among other things.
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Jun 13, 2022 03:02
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A perhaps more interesting and less loaded question is: do you think there was more infighitng before or after roughly may/june of 2020 (when the loving sauron's eye of DHS and whatever other federal resources Trump was able to direct was turned on left wing activists). Groups went from basically zero federal scrutiny to very actively hosed with by the feds almost overnight. Anecdotally, I saw a lot of very involved people repeatedly state that they felt a tangible change at basically every level and particularly in terms of groups imploding due to drama.
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Jun 13, 2022 03:06
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From the HUAC to the Cold War, the government did a spectacular job of making communism and any sort of leftist movement into a dirty word. That's all ended now, but leftists just can't catch a break. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 13, 2022 03:08
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Yes exactly, I'm suggesting that they're reactive and not proactive. Left wing groups were not sufficiently on their radar to even be proactive towards for the vast majority of the last 20 years. It could be argued that a policy of "suppress them whenever they stick their heads up, otherwise just keep tabs on them" might start to have an effect on politics after a few decades of being consistently applied. As well as on what tactics, rhetoric and candidates are considered acceptable or worth supporting.
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Jun 13, 2022 03:11
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RealityWarCriminal posted:From the HUAC to the Cold War, the government did a spectacular job of making communism and any sort of leftist movement into a dirty word. That's all ended now, but leftists just can't catch a break. The Black Panthers are one of the most tragic examples. The U.S went to loving war against them.
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Jun 13, 2022 03:18
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the imperial core is an extremely poor place for leftist organizing for a variety of reasons, and that's highly unlikely to stop being a thing until the crises of capitalism get way, WAY more hosed
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Jun 13, 2022 03:19
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the white hand posted:It could be argued that a policy of "suppress them whenever they stick their heads up, otherwise just keep tabs on them" might start to have an effect on politics after a few decades of being consistently applied. As well as on what tactics, rhetoric and candidates are considered acceptable or worth supporting. I don't doubt at all that it has had some effect, though I'd argue that there isn't much evidence that there's even really been a federal level effort to keep tabs on specifically left wing activists from most of 2001 to 2020, aside from a brief period around occupy and, again, starting around mid 2020. My thesis here is that the real thing stunting the progress of left wing groups is that the major problems, at least in the last 20 years are 1) that left wing groups are fundamentally lacking a critical mass of people to effect the desired scope of change (and are a lot farther from that # than a lot of people would like to think, hell, than I would like to think) and 2) widespread, active and sadly effective efforts by local leos and far right militias/'vigilante' types to intimidate, beat and/or kill people who start being effective or prominent. and in the last two years, add some federal leos and agencies to 2. A big flaming stink posted:the imperial core is an extremely poor place for leftist organizing for a variety of reasons, and that's highly unlikely to stop being a thing until the crises of capitalism get way, WAY more hosed Yknow I completely get why people got so disillusioned after each round of bernie not getting the nomination, but even as a huge cynic, I still think his relative success was indicative of a massive social and culture shift in the US away from all the patently insane 'the free market will solve everything' poo poo that was essentially the status quo in this country for most of the last hundred years. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Jun 13, 2022 |
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Jun 13, 2022 03:29
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theCalamity posted:Yeah, one of the underhanded tactics the US used against the Soviet Union was the whole Iran-Contra affair which flooded black neighborhoods with crack, something that is still felt to this day. Which led to a host of other pervasive and systematic issues such as over-policing, mass incarceration, welfare cuts, among other things. …what? How was flooding the ghetto with crack a tactic against the Soviet Union?
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Jun 13, 2022 03:31
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Oracle posted:…what? How was flooding the ghetto with crack a tactic against the Soviet Union? It was a twofer for the CIA, raising money for Contra terrorists and continuing Nixon's drug war against black Americans. Anything can be justified thru anticommunism.
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Jun 13, 2022 03:35
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E: drat double posts
some plague rats fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Jun 13, 2022 |
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Jun 13, 2022 03:56
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Oracle posted:…what? How was flooding the ghetto with crack a tactic against the Soviet Union? It wasn't anti-communist, it was "anti-communist". It let them funnel money to right-wing death squads in central America while also persecuting the war on black people that the US has been waging since they were first brought over, all justified as part of the ongoing effort against the red menace. It's not like Reagan was going to call George Bush into the office and demand accountability, was it
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Jun 13, 2022 03:59
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Oracle posted:…what? How was flooding the ghetto with crack a tactic against the Soviet Union? The crack epidemic was a result of the Iran-Contra affair, not the goal
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Jun 13, 2022 04:16
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some plague rats posted:It wasn't anti-communist, it was "anti-communist". It let them funnel money to right-wing death squads in central America while also persecuting the war on black people that the US has been waging since they were first brought over, all justified as part of the ongoing effort against the red menace. It's not like Reagan was going to call George Bush into the office and demand accountability, was it there was also some degree of the intelligence community's genuine fear that the black community was a potential fifth column of soviet supporters. there's a reason the term 'whataboutism' was coined to dismiss the soviet criticism 'and you are lynching negroes': we were, quite frequently, it made any pretense American actions had fuckall to do with freedom or civil rights transparently bullshit, and the soviets were, in fact, bankrolling several black liberation movements on the grounds they had good reason to think the American government was their enemy! and unsurprisingly, under Reagan and Bush the crack epidemic was seen as an unequivocal win in destabilizing this perceived internal threat. it'd be nice to think it ended with them, but as the Ferguson organizers found dead of 'suicide' via shots to the back of the head in a car someone set on fire can attest, the American government's stance on black communities remains 'organize and we will kill you' even under a cool black democratic president. we just took Lee Atwater's advice on how to update the messaging with the times.
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Jun 13, 2022 04:19
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Yknow I completely get why people got so disillusioned after each round of bernie not getting the nomination, but even as a huge cynic, I still think his relative success was indicative of a massive social and culture shift in the US away from all the patently insane 'the free market will solve everything' poo poo that was essentially the status quo in this country for most of the last hundred years. bernie was not a leftist, a fact that has become even more obvious since the failure of his campaign
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Jun 13, 2022 04:41
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A big flaming stink posted:bernie was not a leftist, a fact that has become even more obvious since the failure of his campaign I bring him up because the remarkable thing there is that a significant fraction of the country perceived him as one and wanted him. whether he lived up to peoples expectations is secondary
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Jun 13, 2022 05:00
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Three-letter agencies (and the far-right security state in general) were absolutely going a whole lot harder against leftists back in the 60s and 70s than they are now, and yet the leftists back then were able to accomplish far more than leftists today have been. If leftist infighting is worse today, there's a much simpler answer than blaming FBI schemes. It's because the modern left is extremely online, and even the pettiest local feuds can easily spread across the country as everyone takes to Twitter to litigate their personal disputes. Social media is an excellent drama driver. Yeah, the security state doesn't like the left. They never have and they probably never will. Blaming them for 21st-century leftists' inability to win elections doesn't really seem to have any clear basis, though. Vaguely citing FBI crimes five decades ago, or pointing at a few mysterious deaths here and there, is not sufficient to make a case for them being primarily responsible for the left's total inability to do politics. And in general, I think that line of thinking necessarily trends toward a sort of political nihilism in which leftists insist that better things just aren't possible. If there is to be any hope at all, then the left has to spend more time thinking about how they can improve and do better, and a lot less time making excuses and insisting that their failures are someone else's fault. The number one question the left should be asking is "how can we win?".
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Jun 13, 2022 07:05
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I should preface this with "in my personal experience", but: anyone who diagnoses the problem with the left today as infighting caused by "everyone is too online" is demonstrating that their only interaction with actual left politics and orgs is posting about them. That's so far down the list below poo poo like police fuckery and harassment, the crushing weight of the establishment being brought to bear against any candidate who tries to actually speak for people (Boudin is a good recent example, or Bernie, or Corbyn, etc) and the fact that literally all the money and power is against us go a lot further to explaining why left politics are on the back foot as opposed to something about DSA twitter. Sure, all those things existed in the 70s. But the tools have got more sophisticated and the inequalities have gotten so much more entrenched since then. Those people messing about forming splinter groups and beefing on twitter? They've always existed, and if social media went away tomorrow they would still be no loving use, because they fundamentally don't give a poo poo about the actual cause. If you spend more time bitching and forming committees and denouncing your enemies than organizing and actually leaving the house and doing poo poo you're not actually a leftist and basing your assessment of left politics on them is asinine. It's like declaring the space program a failure because a guy in a NASA shirt cut you off in traffic.
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Jun 13, 2022 07:42
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some plague rats posted:I should preface this with "in my personal experience", but: anyone who diagnoses the problem with the left today as infighting caused by "everyone is too online" is demonstrating that their only interaction with actual left politics and orgs is posting about them. That's so far down the list below poo poo like police fuckery and harassment, the crushing weight of the establishment being brought to bear against any candidate who tries to actually speak for people (Boudin is a good recent example, or Bernie, or Corbyn, etc) and the fact that literally all the money and power is against us go a lot further to explaining why left politics are on the back foot as opposed to something about DSA twitter. Sure, all those things existed in the 70s. But the tools have got more sophisticated and the inequalities have gotten so much more entrenched since then. I'm reminded of when I read It Can't Happen Here, a novel written in the 30s. There's a part in which the protagonist (who considers himself both anti-fascist and anti-communist, the noble centrist as it were) talks about how the reason the communist movement can't succeed in America is because there's too much infighting. Kinda been a reason touted by those on the outside for far longer than anyone here has been alive!
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Jun 13, 2022 11:51
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:We're not even 5 years removed from helping install a fascist in Brazil thanks to a project that started with the help of the Obama DoJ lol They tried to turn a 6 hour protest in Cuba into a human right catastrophe because the evil Cuban police sometimes hit protestors with batons while at the same time, American cops were running over protestors lol Not to mention the Bolivia coup that flooded Twitter with millions of Bolivian coup supporters whose IP traced them to the US.
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Jun 13, 2022 11:53
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I wasn't referring to leftist infighting, I was referring to leftists being incapable of appealing to the mainstream or building coalitions with mainstream political interests. But sure, I suppose the left also has a history of not being able to build coalitions with itself. I can think of no other political group that devouts so much time and energy to demonizing the people most likely to work with them.
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Jun 13, 2022 12:20
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Jarmak posted:I wasn't referring to leftist infighting, I was referring to leftists being incapable of appealing to the mainstream or building coalitions with mainstream political interests. But sure, I suppose the left also has a history of not being able to build coalitions with itself. Liberals?
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Jun 13, 2022 12:21
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Jarmak posted:
Have you heard of the Democratic Party
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Jun 13, 2022 12:36
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Main Paineframe posted:Three-letter agencies (and the far-right security state in general) were absolutely going a whole lot harder against leftists back in the 60s and 70s than they are now, and yet the leftists back then were able to accomplish far more than leftists today have beenI This is the main point that nobody who yells about horrible DNC or corrupt Hillary or government interference or FBI or CIA or whatever can really answer. Not only has the American left in the past achieved more with more opposition, BUT so have countless other leftist movements around the world. The difference is that when they faced opposition they changed their tactics and strategy to match it instead of just impotent complaining that the same failed tactics failed again. A big flaming stink posted:bernie was not a leftist, a fact that has become even more obvious since the failure of his campaign If Bernie wasn't a leftist, then who is? Is there even a single elected representative who is? Has the American left managed to get anyone elected anywhere? Or even mounted a campaign? A big flaming stink posted:the imperial core is an extremely poor place for leftist organizing for a variety of reasons, and that's highly unlikely to stop being a thing until the crises of capitalism get way, WAY more hosed And why would anyone think that given the left's showing thus far, it would be the left that benefits from that and not literally any other political faction, seeing as they're already better organized, more numerous and more ruthless then leftists, with more efficient propaganda and political/cultural networks? Like if the current situation is just impossible for the left to do anything, why would they thrive in an environment even more unforgiving of weakness, infighting and believing in the inherent goodness of your obvious enemies? At least the current system gives them constant new tries after constant failures, collapsing empires and civil wars don't. DarkCrawler fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Jun 13, 2022 |
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Jun 13, 2022 12:46
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Main Paineframe posted:Three-letter agencies (and the far-right security state in general) were absolutely going a whole lot harder against leftists back in the 60s and 70s than they are now, and yet the leftists back then were able to accomplish far more than leftists today have been. Ferguson was barely a decade ago, it's never stopped. https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-ferguson-activist-deaths-black-lives-matter-20190317-story.html Leftist organizations are also terminally online I agree, but both things can be happening. Bellmaker fucked around with this message at 13:00 on Jun 13, 2022 |
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Jun 13, 2022 12:54
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Main Paineframe posted:Three-letter agencies (and the far-right security state in general) were absolutely going a whole lot harder against leftists back in the 60s and 70s than they are now, and yet the leftists back then were able to accomplish far more than leftists today have been. There's a left that's active and represented in national politics, and it deeply alarms entrenched gerontocrats within the Democratic Party when it wins primaries. If anything the lefties are starting to win because it's the mainstream that's become too feckless and dysfunctional to accomplish anything, being pulled kicking and screaming as they are to doing anything of what they promised. We're living in a world where "Biden isn't good enough to accomplish even moderate goals" is no longer a fringe position of Leftist Twitter, it's become a topic in the New York Times because there's really no way to paint around the problem. Should Biden Run in 2024? Democratic Whispers of ‘No’ Start to Rise. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/11/us/politics/biden-2024-election-democrats.html ... This is loving wild poo poo coming out of the center-left paper of record. The 2024 strategy is now down to "Well, we could win if it's against Trump." Where have I heard that before? Nancy Pelosi talks about "needing" a Republican Party. God drat, even milquetoast op-ed columnists have abandoned this deranged line. We have a party negotiating with itself, which is simply bad politics. Chuck Schumer wants $50,000 off your student loans. The Biden White House floated $10,000 off, means-tested, in the papers, and received the negative reaction that deserved. Show some loving leadership instead of struggling to come out with a plan that's 20% as good as the Senate's position. It turned out it was not enough to simply bring decorum back to the White House. I imagined in my head some kind of task force designed to reverse and prevent Trump poo poo--just as a basic Day One Thing, if this guy was so loving horrible. But while we've undone and reversed course on some things, this administration struggles to undo some of his most vile policy initiatives, or even finds itself in the bizarre position of attempting to defend them. That's to say nothing of fulfilling campaign promises. Non-stop weak poo poo coming out of this White House, and it reads as a party in chaos at the absolute worst time--we're coming off an attempted palace coup, the stakes could not be higher.
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Jun 13, 2022 13:12
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Honestly, I think the broader issue with Leftist movements is that the US has really eradicated the ability for authentic coalition building. Other countries with some exceptions have more parties and in the past, there was a bit more fluidity between the US parties. If you just said that the Democratic Party was two or three separate parties that form a coalition, you wouldn't have conversations about fracturing when it's clear that they are just separate entities. But more importantly, if we did have multiple parties forming coalitions, I don't think the Leftist Party would be a particularly powerful one in the US, but it would be one with leverage. Because it would take its share of political machinery to focus strictly on its own party and interests, and its support for the Liberal Party wouldn't be guaranteed and they might sometimes form a coalition with the Libertarian Party on some issues or even a Family Values Party on some issues. The Liberals might have more power, but they would have to bend to the Leftist Party to maintain any sort of government control. The issue right now is that for the most part, the Leftists who do exist have no realistic avenue to enter federal politics besides the Democratic Party and have to bend themselves to fit in. Our current situation makes it incredibly hard for Leftists to hold any power on the national stage because when they exert leverage they are seen as weakening the party. So, on the national stage you either have national figures like Bernie who became prominent not by really doing much, but by simply not being evil and over decades and decades of just not being evil was able to become prominent through post-Obama disillusionment OR someone like AOC who I think wanted to leverage her clout after her upset victory and jumpstart a Bernie like prominence in which she actually accomplished poo poo, but has struggled to thread the needle of working within the party to the point where she gets attacked from all sides. I think that honestly if it was just the law enforcement apparatus keeping Lefties down or Democratic ineptness or Leftist infighting, that would be a much rosier reality because those are namable problems with solutions that are somewhat easier to imagine. But I think the root causes that stop Leftist momentum are much more deeply interwoven into our political system, it's hard to imagine an answer.
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Jun 13, 2022 13:31
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:there was also some degree of the intelligence community's genuine fear that the black community was a potential fifth column of soviet supporters. Whataboutism was coined during the Troubles in Ireland by an Irish journalist regarding the U.K. government. It came about 25 years after that particular Soviet criticism.
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Jun 13, 2022 14:03
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DarkCrawler posted:If Bernie wasn't a leftist, then who is? Is there even a single elected representative who is? Has the American left managed to get anyone elected anywhere? Or even mounted a campaign? The American center (Democrats) and right (Republicans) have pushed out the left. It does not exist as a coherent entity and any time things begin to coalesce (occupy wall street, BLM, pick your grass roots effort) the center and right lock arms and suppress it again. There is no left to get leftists elected in any type of critical mass. We have left-leaning centrist politicians in a center right party, that's it... and as far as i can tell all of them are pro-state, they just want to use it differently.
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Jun 13, 2022 14:04
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Whataboutism was coined during the Troubles in Ireland by an Irish journalist regarding the U.K. government. It came about 25 years after that particular Soviet criticism. So not coined, but still solidly defined as being a slam that an empire uses against its opponents who dare to bring up the illicit and criminal actions of said empire when the defense of the empire is that it is a moral and just institution.
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Jun 13, 2022 14:39
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We really lost the plot on the original discussion about why children are open season in America if we think the shiftless left who can't organize and only love in-fighting, drama, and hot chip are somehow responsible for it. It's real "all my enemies are weak feckless idiots and also control my life" poo poo. Either the left are so useless they can't organize a trip to the grocery store or they're responsible for failing to save kids, you can't have both.
Gumball Gumption fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Jun 13, 2022 |
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Jun 13, 2022 14:56
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