Explanation: The Nazis were, formally, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Some people take this to mean that the Nazis were, in some meaningful way, ‘left’ or socialist.

The truth is that they were neither. The name was made to appeal to the working-class by feigning interest in workers’ issues, but the Nazis drew overwhelmingly from, and addressed the pet issues of, the disaffected middle class. While there were less capitalist-friendly factions in the party (notably, the working-class SA and the Strasserists), they were not what we would recognize as left-wing, instead representing a distinctly reactionary take on opposition to capitalism more in-line with Catholic conservatives expressing resentment of the bourgeoisie in the 19th century.

Those less-capitalist-friendly factions were suppressed in favor of Hitler’s alliance with land magnates and capitalists in 1934, and so became moot in any case.

Today in “The Global South™ has no independent moral agency and is wholly dependent on the whims of the Global North™…”

I appreciate the advice, but I don’t have that kind of money on hand. Or the willingness, for that matter, to take any of this to court. I get stress ulcers enough just dealing with day-to-day life. At this point, I’ll be content to just get out of here.

And like I said, it’s not uninhabitable. Place is practically a basement, so it’s only on the most miserable days that the heat seeps in enough that I mourn I can’t fit myself in the fridge, lmao.

Not uninhabitable, just uncomfortable. My landlord is not exactly cooperative in any case, and it takes time, resources, and perhaps most of all, energy to square up seriously on such issues. He already has refused to fix the heating, the oven, the wonky electricity, and the leaky roof, and is currently trying to kick me out so he can raise rent.

… I’m actively looking for a new place.

PugJesus had been seizing pronouns from every passerby on Lemmy

There goes PugJesus’s retirement fund 😔

More concerning is that they know my address.

what

Peaceful protests won’t get rid of the regime. What they’re good for is connecting, organizing, demonstrating opposition is a viable size to uncertain bystanders who fear being part of a tiny minority and getting crushed, and generating enthusiasm for further, more ‘strategic’ work.

~30% goes directly to the rich as individuals. Probably a good 5% goes to wastage on defense, on Eisenhower noted.

Another significant percentage goes to corporations which then reroute that money in official and unofficial benefits as befits the owners of private fiefdoms that are, nonetheless, not directly counted in the net worth of rich individuals.

Security theatre.

“We should pick the less bad option while we organize for real change.”

“Oh, so you just want DIFFERENT RULER in charge???”

If you stay out of a Nazi death camp long enough to learn the difference between dogshit centrist neolibs and literal fucking fascists, I invite you to learn about the concept of harm reduction.

They were literally the anti-fascist coalition in the 2024 election, in case you missed the whole part about the literal Nazi who’s running the country right now being the only other viable candidate.

Or are you here to play apologist for a Nazi drooling at the thought of murdering LGBT folk, and say everything is just business as usual? I suppose anything to play tribalist games in opposition to the DEMONRATS

You claimed that the Gaza issue ‘alone’ proved your point. So originally you were suggesting that not only those 6 mil were left fanatics, but the other 12 mil as well? *

My point is not that they’re ‘fanatics’, my point is that they chose to abstain from voting for the sake of some abstract notion of left purity despite this leading directly to the murder of MORE of the people they claimed to be standing up for, and in service to the genocidaires they claimed to be standing against. I mean, fuck’s sake, the Israeli far-right was openly celebrating Trump’s win, and openly pulling for him before that.

Enough of that 6 million were left-leaning and voted on purity politics concerns, as demonstrated by the top issue named being Gaza, not a traditionally right-wing or centrist issue, and one that polling backed up even at the time as overwhelmingly the concern of left-leaning voters, not centrist or right-leaning voters, that Harris, a centrist ghoul but the anti-fascist coalition candidate, lost by a paltry ~2 million votes, leading the literal Nazi candidate to win.

My claim is that there are two groups: crazy abstaining leftoids and normal people who lean left. The Dems lost because they failed to effectively appeal to this second group.

There was considerable cross-pollination of ideas between the fringe left in 2024 on the Gaza issue and the mainstream; I find it would be a very difficult argument, then, to make that the ‘normal people who lean left’ were not similarly ‘enjoying’ a cross-pollination of narratives of that variety, especially since the ultimate decision made was to abstain from voting despite one candidate being distinctively and significantly worse on the issue than the other. That fringe left groups openly pushed the idea that “both sides” were the same on the issue of Gaza in 2024, it would seem difficult to suggest that ‘normal people who lean left’ were immune to narrative suggestions by ideological allies, while mainstream sources and folk were uniquely suggestible.

What’s more, where and why is the distinction made? If the reason for abstaining is predicated on the same insane ideas, that one worships Stalin and the other ‘only’ thinks that left-purity on an issue is worth genociding Gazans and Americans alike is a minor detail. My claim is not that the majority of those who abstained on the Gaza issue are Stalinists, but that they, based on insane ideas of purity and overwhelmingly on leftist grounds, not right-wing or centrist grounds (as neither right-wing nor centrists are particularly anti-Gazan genocide in appreciable numbers, nor are they ordinarily reliable Dem voters), cratered our last hope of averting all of… this. Regardless of what happens going forward, we very much did not avert goddamn anything, and we very easily could have.

The ‘R/Stalinisgreat’ reference is sardonic, not literal.

I think that group can be mobilized with a good campaign that appeals to those people.

I think we’re arguing about different things.

My point is not that these people cannot be reached under any circumstances. My point is that here, on Lemmy, people constantly talk about how abstaining is a perfectly acceptable and moral choices under grounds of left-purity. For that matter, the attitude is far from restricted to the Gaza situation; the Gaza genocide is just the purity politics issue which is most starkly leftist and the one most often praised on here, whereas the broader argument is that this whole purity politics bullshit is bad and contrary to the point of political participation for anyone with a hint of actual morality instead of masturbatory self-indulgence dressed up as civic interest.

As the meme points on, no amount of street cred or internal fuzzies justifies murdering people for no gain for anyone except the people you (generic you) claim to be enemies with. This was a bad decision; in fact, it was an outright immoral decision, and it should be recognized as such. That many people on here insist on lionizing this decision as some heroic blow against ‘the Man’ is not only morally repugnant, but actively encourages a repeat of this purity-politics behavior the next time the issue of “Please for the love of God unite against the literal goddamn Nazis” comes up, whether in an electoral context or an… uglier one. And in support of that, you can look at any number of historical revolutions which fell to infighting, even at the cost of their own literal lives; the successful revolutions succeed because unity politics, not purity politics, are the narrative successfully pushed in service to defeating the greater fucking evil.

By normalizing this purity-politics outlook wherein people are encouraged to sabotage anti-fascist coalition efforts based on nebulous ideas of strategic civic-duty decisions as a spiritualist, personal matter, we set up the scene for this exact kind of situation to happen again. To be quite honest with you, having my life potentially condemned by people who claim to be the allies of folk like me, on what is theoretically on behalf of folk they, likewise, have condemned in greater numbers, is a shit deal to go through even once. I would rather not go through it twice, assuming I get to live that long.

I’m not looking forward to RFK’s camps for concentration. I’m not looking forward to having Medicaid stripped from me and ending up unmedicated and vomiting blood on the floor of my bathroom, again, this time probably until I exsanguinate. I’m not looking forward to hearing about Israel finishing up their long-desired genocide in both Gaza and the West Bank. I’m not looking forward to hearing the horror stories from Alligator Auschwitz. I’m not looking forward to hearing about whatever murderous fuckwit plans the administration has for trans folk. I’m not looking forward to the 6 million projected deaths from the pointlessly cruel abolition of US aid internationally. I’m not looking forward to hearing how many additional Ukrainians are going to die because the US is now simping for Russian genocide and imperialism. And I’m really fucking tired of hearing people talk about how letting all of this happen was Great, Actually, because it fulfilled some need to keep a pure soul for the Leftist Afterlife™.

Don’t worry, if it gets out, all the Good Christian Pastors™ will tell their flock that Trump is just like Cyrus the Great, and that God chooses to work through men who do not adhere to godly norms, and it’s important to unconditionally support those men chosen by God anyway… and then as soon as the flock is pacified with this and the issue completely forgotten by their sheep fucking brains, their shepherds will go back to praising Trump as a good godly Christian man, and the flock will cheerfully bleat in agreement.

It’s funny that they’re so frightened when the release of the files will change next-to-no-one’s minds.

It’s like they don’t even understand what bootlicking depths their own cult is in (PROTIP: it’s the same bootlicking depths every GOP congresscreature is at)

When the dimly-lit future years, fight must be made even when no enemy

Or why Israel constantly spits in our face any time we ask for the most meager amount of support in a matter that doesn’t directly benefit Israel despite the US constantly wrecking its reputation to run interference for whatever fuckwit atrocities Israel has most recently committed, or why Israel kills so many American citizens with impunity, or why Israel sells American military secrets to China, or…

Brother, I cannot express to you how weird it is that you so blatantly throw gazan lives in the “already dead pile, so not really apart of the conversation, except for those who want no dead people. Those are the real killers. Not the killers I want you to vote for. You practically voted for the killers I didn’t want you to vote for!”

I’ve explicitly, several fucking times, pointed out that the NAZIS WINNING MEANS MORE DEAD GAZANS THAN THE NAZIS LOSING.

I’m sorry that’s too difficult for you to parse?

In other threads on this very topic - something which I could not expect you to know, but for demonstrative purposes - I have repeatedly pointed out that half the fucking reason that the protest vote and abstainers are so fucking ridiculous is because it wasn’t “We’re ready to enable the side that is against Palestinian genocide, even if they’re worse than the Dems on ALL other issues” - that, at least, has a certain logic to it - it’s that they said “We’re ready to enable the side that is for making Palestinian genocide worse, AND is worse than the Dems on all other issues.” with full knowledge that they are not offering any alternative.

It’s not single-issue voting. The single-issue is being tossed aside as worthless if it’s not ‘pure’ enough. “If we can’t save all Palestinians, we may as well save none”. There’s no strategy to it. NO ONE is fucking saved by this strategy, except a few Zionists and Nazis. MORE children in Gaza AND THE WEST BANK are going to be MURDERED by Zionist genocidaires with INCREASED US support and tax money PRECISELY BECAUSE OF THIS ‘STRATEGY’

You sit here and argue some weird logical loop that somehow means you actually, the guy who voted for the genocidal regime, are somehow less culpable to that continued genocide than the person who couldn’t condone that coming from their actions.

The one who welcomed in a MORE genocidal regime whose expressly stated purpose was to give all possible aid to that genocide.

Sorry you don’t want to stop asspatting people who gave Israel everything they wanted? I understand it would be really inconvenient if you said something that hurt someone in your online bubble’s feelings over them literally giving all possible aid to a fucking genocide because they wanted to virtue signal?

Sorry that you think your own vote to minimize genocide is worse than your pals’ inaction in support of literal fucking Nazis seeking to support that same genocide to the fucking hilt?

They should know I only communicate through MSN Messenger these days. Good thing it’ll be around forever!