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In the wake of the British election, and with the American one looming, we need to ask how are we going to get progressive leaders with progressive politics elected. The right has had the advantage of the consolidation of power over the last century, owning most of the major media corporations, and a ruthless disregard for truth and decency. And it plays to our most primal instincts – tribalism, otherism, etc. The left has been hamstrung by the rules of decorum, connotations of socialism, the ‘femininity’ of environmentalism (a whole thread in itself). So the challenge is massive and critical. There seem to be three main roads ahead: 1) Thoughtful articulation of nuanced policies 2) Violent revolution 3) Charismatic candidate 4) Cambridge Analytica style targeted fuckery 5) Large scale, sustained, non-violent direct action Or some combination of the Charismatic leaders seem to be the most important there. In some ways this is about dissecting the Brittish election - Labour seemed to do everything right, and Corbyn was fine to good. But there just wasn't enough inspiration to get them even close to the line. In Australia, our most successful progressive leader was Bob Hawke, a guy who could charm the pants off anyone. Since then we have been sorely lacking AOC is really the model here. Spit their fire back at them, and do it with class. I made that argument here, and perhaps that is the simplest answer. So how do we find them, and get them in power? Who is out there? PYF progressive firebrands I guess. How charismatic do they even have to be? Katie Hill seems pretty great, and I guess has a charisma of her own, but isn’t necessarily what you would consider to be a typical room grabber. Progressive policies are common sense and usually carry wide support - look at background checks for gun control. The idea of for profit healthcare is so demonstrably stupid, adding another layer of charges on to life saving procedures purely for the benefit of 3rd party shareholders, under the delusion that doing so somehow provides a superior level of service. There is a long fight ahead and it’s worth trying to stake out a strategy forward. (Please excuse the brief and fragmented nature of the OP, I just wanted to get it out there.) TL;DR - how are we going to fix this mess. Bucky Fullminster fucked around with this message at 14:12 on Dec 13, 2019 |
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Dec 13, 2019 03:50
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i'm really starting to appreciate the "Violent Revolution" option more and more as time goes on. i don't think we need a lot of violence. just a health insurance exec here, a billionaire hedge fund owner there, really put the fear of god into some people. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 13, 2019 03:56
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DC Murderverse posted:i'm really starting to appreciate the "Violent Revolution" option more and more as time goes on. i don't think we need a lot of violence. just a health insurance exec here, a billionaire hedge fund owner there, really put the fear of god into some people.  (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 13, 2019 03:57
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DC Murderverse posted:i'm really starting to appreciate the "Violent Revolution" option more and more as time goes on. i don't think we need a lot of violence. just a health insurance exec here, a billionaire hedge fund owner there, really put the fear of god into some people. I'm sorry, we're not allowed to talk about progressive solutions that would actually be effective on this forum. Please return to crowing about the charismatic hope monger charlatan-of-the-month or moaning about how unfair it is that regressives get to rig the  games so nakedly and aggressively.(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 13, 2019 04:10
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The main barrier to progressive politics (probably better to just call them "left-wing/socialist" since "progressive" is extremely vague) is that the wealthy control the vast majority of the media, which shapes how people view the world. I don't think there's any guaranteed way to win, but I think that if the left does manage to take power they should use that power to purge the right-wing elements in their society (namely through eliminating the wealthy and the laws that allow people to passively profit from merely owning things). As long as the wealthy exist, it's impossible to really achieve any sort of meaningful democracy, so there's a necessity to use some level of heavy-handed/"authoritarian" methods just to remove the overwhelming advantage wealthy people/organizations enjoy. The goal of getting rid of the wealthy isn't so much a matter of "getting rid of bad people" as it is needing to eliminate a class of people. Obviously there's no "evil gene" in wealthy people - it's just that the condition of being wealthy makes a person evil by necessity*. So it's not enough to figuratively (or literally) guillotine the wealthy - you need to ensure that no one can take their place. The message shouldn't be "wealthy people are assholes" so much as "wealthy people should not be allowed to exist," and that's an important distinction because if you're motivated by the former then you'll inevitably lose your way when you encounter a nice-sounding or personable wealthy person. Without doing this, the wealthy will always enjoy a huge advantage because they can control political narratives through their control of the media. This is arguably even more the case in the modern world than it was in centuries past, since media is so incredibly pervasive now. If anything, I feel like the current left-wing surge in the US is largely due to the wealthy loving up and getting overconfident and letting a person like Bernie Sanders have a voice during the 2016 primary. * being wealthy is sort of similar to "being a murderer" or something, in the sense that it requires ongoing choices/actions - namely the choice to hold (and usually grow through rent-seeking or exploiting labor) wealthy. So it's basically synonymous with evil in the same way, even though rhetorically it's often treated like race or gender Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Dec 13, 2019 |
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Dec 13, 2019 04:11
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Really I think the most important thing is to eliminate the power of interest groups by eliminating political advertising. Level the playing field by giving all viable candidates a spot on a debate stage and a few pages of a newspaper and a bit of air time on the television over a few weeks. Boom, lobbyists are irrelevant. Money is worthless. Politics is about policy not who has the deepest pockets. But maybe that is a separate discussion. A violent revolution is unlikely to happen, and unlikely to stick and be effective. When we're up against the already quasi-facist police-states we've got at present, it's hard to see how it would work in reality.
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Dec 13, 2019 04:12
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Bucky Fullminster posted:Really I think the most important thing is to eliminate the power of interest groups by eliminating political advertising. Level the playing field by giving all viable candidates a spot on a debate stage and a few pages of a newspaper and a bit of air time on the television over a few weeks. This would not be effective, because all media is effectively "political advertising" (and especially news media). People derive their political opinions from everything they see/hear, so as long as corporations are producing most of this content, people will internalize the messages that content directly or indirectly sends. The only true way to address this is to transform our society/economy such that the organizations that produce media are not owned and/or beholden to the wealthy.
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Dec 13, 2019 04:15
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I also don't think the amplification effect social media has should be downplayed. Put aside the obvious political advertising corruption poo poo for a moment, and remember that there are tons of regressive assholes out there. Nobody paid your racist aunts and uncles to form impromptu PACs to radicalize each other and your more moderate conservative-leaning family members, but that's exactly what Facebook and Twitter have done. They always had lovely opinions in isolation, but social media gave them both a megaphone and a sense of community to reinforce and embolden those rancid ideas. You could wave a wand and magically remove the political money from social media, even the Russian bots while you're at it, but the Minion memes would continue to flow nonetheless.
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Dec 13, 2019 04:24
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nothing can be done we are witnessing the fermi paradox
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Dec 13, 2019 04:31
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Electoralism is dead. Parallel structures as the first step, with the aim of branching it out to destroying the state in time.
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Dec 13, 2019 04:41
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DC Murderverse posted:i'm really starting to appreciate the "Violent Revolution" option more and more as time goes on. i don't think we need a lot of violence. just a health insurance exec here, a billionaire hedge fund owner there, really put the fear of god into some people. And then they double down and kill you.
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Dec 13, 2019 04:48
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Oh yeah that’s the other thing: 4) Clinical ‘Cambridge analytica’ style exploitation of data and manipulation of social media Again, the left are often hindered by scruples. Radiolab’s recent ‘Breaking Bongo’ episode had a little peek into what that can of worms might look like.
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Dec 13, 2019 04:52
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Ytlaya posted:This would not be effective, because all media is effectively "political advertising" (and especially news media). People derive their political opinions from everything they see/hear, so as long as corporations are producing most of this content, people will internalize the messages that content directly or indirectly sends. I mean, yes, to an extent, but you can’t tel me that all those millions of dollars of ad buys don’t mean anything. It would probably need to be supported by some legislation about what the media is allowed to cover which is getting into more controversial territory, but could be worked out in theory. It will never be completely even, but it’d be far better than the ridiculous poo poo-show of a money pit it is now Edit - even just the fact that reps have to spend so much TIME fundraising. It’s a massive cancer on the process Bucky Fullminster fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Dec 13, 2019 |
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Dec 13, 2019 04:55
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gently caress this electoralist garbage, time for direct action. That's how it worked when there was absolutely no loving hope in hell for any sort of "leftist" government to happen. Strikes, picket lines, garbage dumping in rich assholes' doorsteps, public embarrassment and property damage. They are going to spend millions upon millions to gently caress every one of us over, might as well get even with what we can
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Dec 13, 2019 05:00
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I’m not sure how it is in other Western countries but I think a lot of people downplay just how much “Independence” means to your lower middle class and above block of Americans. I’m in bed right now so I don’t think I really have the time or energy to cohesively long post, but a key part of that independence is the belief that you can make yourself something and then do what you want with what you reap (charity, hoard it, leave it to your kids, etc.). It’s aspirational while also making you feel like you are in control of your life (so much so that it masks the way that the media and such can turn you into a sheep.) I think a lot of people are being pressed into lovely situations (student loan debt, medical debt) that they are attracted to poo poo like loan forgiveness and m4a, but I don’t think America as a whole is ready for truly sustained progressive politics, at least how they are messaged now (“eat the rich”). At some point the pendulum will swing and it could very well be a failed experiment where the Rs just ratfuck progressive policies while convincing the public centrism is the answer or whatever the gently caress, thus setting us back into third way Dems. I think in 2020 a charismatic leader with hardline socialist policies like Bernie could win irrespective of the media and all that poo poo, just based on where many people are at, but it really could be a bubble - but maybe it is a good shock to the system. Also we probably need to get voter turnout up and destroy local suppression tactics E: disclaimer, my personal preferences would be a lot more aggressive than the above, but after taking to a lot of conservative/center people and just thinking about what is happening elsewhere, that’s my objective analysis
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Dec 13, 2019 05:01
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5) large scale, sustained, non-violent direct action, along the lines of extinction rebellion, who almost looked like they made the needle consider thinking about moving for a second
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Dec 13, 2019 05:15
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I was under the impression extinction rebellion were #resistance-esque managed opposition shitheads.
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Dec 13, 2019 05:22
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I’m not quite sure what you mean, and my understanding is they’re a pretty broad church who are at least nominally aware of their privilege, but my point was more about their methodology than ideology
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Dec 13, 2019 05:25
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Bucky Fullminster posted:I mean, yes, to an extent, but you can’t tel me that all those millions of dollars of ad buys don’t mean anything.
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Dec 13, 2019 05:27
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Managed opposition is the methodology. Specifically, to act as a harmless relief valve for popular resentment that can't simply be channeled into racism. The whole point is to waste pissed off progressives' time, money, and enthusiasm on an ineffective-by-design boondoggle.
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Dec 13, 2019 05:29
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posted this in the UKMT before I realised it'd work better in here, so here you go https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/1205323794413428736?s=19 https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/1205324498700062723?s=19 electoralism will not save us. Liberalism cannot defeat fascism. Fascism must be defeated by force.
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Dec 13, 2019 05:32
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Worth remembering that horrible as WWII was, the facists didn't have nuclear ICBMs the first time around, and the world wasn't under the slow-release Armageddon poison capsule of climate change.
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Dec 13, 2019 06:18
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what if global warming is a deliberate inoculation on the part of the owners of this planet to attempt to blunt the effects of the clearly inevitable nuclear winter?
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Dec 13, 2019 06:28
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I think following the last UK general election, seeing a socialist party rise to power in Spain, and the 2018 midterms has led to a lot of leftists falling into the same sort of smug feeling of inevitability that cost liberals so much between 2012 and now. Hopefully they don't fall into the same spiral of despair and disillusion from reality that lead to a retreat into fiction and culture war stuff -only instead of hooting about prestige tv I guess we'll post guillotine memes on social media and fantasize about revolutions and beating up fascists. We've still got quite a fight ahead of us, and there's been progress but nothing is certain, and it's just as silly to take the "well actually, we lost because the general population is too racist and stupid," stance. Hell was Labour's defeat even really that crushing? I mean how much further behind where they were in 2017 are they gonna wind up? That's with active sabotage by new labour, defectors, and blinking and letting this become a BREXIT election instead of sticking to their guns that this was about austerity and wealth distribution. Just the fact that nearly every candidate has had to at least pay lipservice to M4A in the dem primary if they wanted to get into double digits is a sign we're making political gains or that despite an all out media blackout Sanders is still in 2nd or 3rd place in pretty much every state that matters right now is a big deal.
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Dec 13, 2019 07:25
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Here's the thing: telling people facts doesn't work. It's been proven that presenting actual facts with regards to policies to people with incorrect facts just makes them dig their heels in. What you have to do is make an emotional case. What will make people more concerned about global warming: a chart that shows rising sea levels, or a photograph of a polar bear on a small block of ice, looking forlorn?
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Dec 13, 2019 07:49
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Bucky Fullminster posted:I mean, yes, to an extent, but you can’t tel me that all those millions of dollars of ad buys don’t mean anything. They might make the difference between a Republican and a Democrat winning, but they aren't what determines the bipartisan status quo that causes most of the harm and suffering in our country and abroad.
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Dec 13, 2019 08:29
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Occupy Wall Street banker's homes
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Dec 13, 2019 08:56
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There probably won't be a sea change at this point until the economy actually collapses, which will be caused by the sea change.
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Dec 13, 2019 08:57
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Gentlemen, the Villages represent the greatest concentration of generational wealth in the shallow sea. Brief your squads on your individual directives. We're going to take them in their sleep, we march at shortly after 7 p.m.
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Dec 13, 2019 09:07
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Literally the only way the US doesn't end up a permafucked corporate dystopia is if the streets run red with the blood of the capitalists, at this point.
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Dec 13, 2019 09:37
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The corporate oligarchy will have the backing of the most overfunded military in the history of the world even if a populist revolt were to arise. I see no realistic path forward. The only way I can perceive a reverse of the trend towards facism is once the dam breaks, the environment and the economy shatter and the forces that keep this country under its thumb have their power base ripped out from under them from a populace with nothing left to lose. RIght now, Progressives don't have power. Power belongs to evil people. Power makes them evil. No, It doesn't make them evil, it burns away the socializing instincts ingrained in us to assure we don't literally eat each other. The wealthy and the powerful are only hindered by empathy, loyalty, honesty and all the other instincts that makes a person 'good'. The idea that the world now has 3+ years of watching Donald Trump be the worst president in American history and somehow his re-election is still on the table is really all you need to know about the true nature of humanity and the possibility of true change.
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Dec 13, 2019 13:21
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Here in Aus the simple fact is people vote with their wallets, and most people - even progressives - aren't altruistic when it gets down to it. That's human nature and it's been proven many times over in the last decade. From experience here, the way people vote is pretty simple; they vote with one hand in the ballet box, and one hand on their wallet. On the one hand, you have the LNP, a bunch of moustache twirling villains who would be scary if they weren't so hilariously stupid and incompetent. On the other hand, you have the ALP, who while they are also incompetent, they generally are (or were) out to do the right thing with the right policies. Keeping services under public ownership, funding medicare, more money for education, for science, less money for coal mines, etc. The issue is that the majority of Australian people over the age of 35 are: * home owners * up to their loving eyeballs in debt because of it These people don't give a gently caress about medicare, or science funding, or coal mines. Well, more accurately, they care about it, but no where near enough to vote for it, when voting for that party risks cratering their over inflated property "investments". Armed revolt would never work or if it did, it would only work temporarily, because as fun as it is to shake fists at Jeff Bezos and your Musks of the world the real villains of this decade are normal people who are desperately clinging to any scrap of measurable success they currently have, regardless of how much it fucks it all up for future generations.
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Dec 13, 2019 13:46
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If left-wing electoralism does work from here on out, it can only be through uncompromising nationalism, which I loving hate because nationalism is poison
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Dec 13, 2019 13:52
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Coolness Averted posted:Just the fact that nearly every candidate has had to at least pay lipservice to M4A in the dem primary if they wanted to get into double digits is a sign we're making political gains or that despite an all out media blackout Sanders is still in 2nd or 3rd place in pretty much every state that matters right now is a big deal. This is a pretty important point. The Overton Window isn't exactly two dimensional, but there have been changes which matter. Which make these losses all the much harder to understand. I also think it's worth remembering, we're basically none from three in the last four years (in America/England/Australia). Clinton lost in 2016, Shorten lost in AUS in fucken whatever year that was, and Corbyn lost just now. All of those losses do serious harm and push us back a lot further, but they're not permanent. And they're not just about progressivism. Clinton had Russian fuckery and the nuclear weapon of Cambridge Analytica to deal with (as well as being easy to dislike), Corbyn got kind of hosed by the Brexit Situation, and Shorten started talking about loving with franking credits right before the election which was enough to turn enough people off. The point is that in all of those cases there is more than just thew policies going on. But yeah, the fact that Trump still enjoys a chance is pretty loving troubling.
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Dec 13, 2019 13:54
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DC Murderverse posted:i'm really starting to appreciate the "Violent Revolution" option more and more as time goes on. i don't think we need a lot of violence. just a health insurance exec here, a billionaire hedge fund owner there, really put the fear of god into some people. This is literally the only way things will change and I doubt it would be for the better. However, it is inevitable.
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Dec 13, 2019 14:06
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Pollyanna posted:This is literally the only way things will change and I doubt it would be for the better. However, it is inevitable. Yeah, when I see the 17-year old friends of my youngest sister saying "actually we totally should guillotine those fucks", things are bound to happen
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Dec 13, 2019 14:34
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I don't see a path forward with at worst an 8 billion dollar multinational hosing down the world populace with open right wing propaganda and at best the rest of incumbent "centrist" media hosing them down with messaging aligned with the benevolent-to-a-point wealthy and powerful.
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Dec 13, 2019 15:11
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ChrisBTY posted:RIght now, Progressives don't have power. Power belongs to evil people. Power makes them evil. No, It doesn't make them evil, it burns away the socializing instincts ingrained in us to assure we don't literally eat each other. The wealthy and the powerful are only hindered by empathy, loyalty, honesty and all the other instincts that makes a person 'good'. This works backwards too, I'm afraid. The society we live in which produces the rulers we have also eats away at the people within it, and they retreat into bunkers of property and perhaps family. As long as they have enough to feel safe in those, they'll vote for anyone who feeds that worldview, and will reject any notion of a social world, and security through society.
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Dec 13, 2019 15:48
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Y'all need to stop confusing pessimism with realism. How the gently caress can you even pretend to be leftist with such a lovely view of humanity? We have survived worse catastrophes with fewer tools. Our population dropped to 30k or less and we came back. Yes, things are bad and I understand you and people you know are well and truly hurting, but giving up doesn't solve anything. Don't horseshoe yourself into being blackpilled. You can make the world better even if only a small amount for those you interact with by being sincere and good. Do that, and try to get them on board with being human to others.
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Dec 13, 2019 16:37
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lol so many people are going to get banned in this thread.Coolness Averted posted:We have survived worse catastrophes with fewer tools. Our population dropped to 30k or less and we came back. You better hope we can do it again.
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Dec 13, 2019 16:44
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