Thanks! 🖤
If you like Behind the Bastards, you should check out Margaret Killjoy’s “Cool People who did Cool Stuff”, it’s excellent, and similar in the sense it is the opposite of the podcast. Rather than focusing on shitty people who do shitty things, it talks about its namesake. If you aren’t a big fan of what else I say, I can say with confidence that you will at least like this.
I can see your dislike and/or dissatisfaction with lemmy leftists on this, but as someone who is not exactly an advocate for electoralism I understand theirs too. To briefly explain that, many people on the far left, such as myself, do not see electoralism as a viable means of change for many reasons. But I feel that some people take it to a silly conclusion of non-voting. I get the sentiment that you will never get a mainstream candidate that supports your views. But at a local level, one that isn’t gridlocked by congress, the likelihood that your vote could be the difference between a trans person having access to gender affirming care is much higher. Even in a congressional election there could be a chance that you help a non-republican win the seat.
In general, I feel that a better take on electoralism is, it will never lead to positive change, but can lead to negative change. You can never dismantle the master’s house with his own tools, after all. But the master can still build a new oppressive structure with them. All successful movements that sought to improve the conditions of the marginalized, be it the slave revolts and the civil war, the civil rights movement, the feminist/suffragette movement, and the LGBTQ+ rights movement, can thank direct action for their victories. But if the reactionary forces have their way, mounting such a movement will be more difficult, even though having the liberals in power won’t help that much (See MLK’s letter from a birmingham jail, and various Malcom X speeches).
I do recognize and agree with the sentiment of those living in a heavily gerrymandered district, or one with voter suppression though. Like it or not, in some area there is no hope of change at even the local level (at least, there is no hope without a movement behind it).
IMHO the sentiment on the presidential vote being unimportant is somewhat accurate. I dont mean that who the current president is has no impact. I do mean that the hope of having any lasting beneficial impact is essentially nil.
In action, it seems like a ratcheting effect where each step backwards is met with little effort to fix or undo past damage. Any victories done by the last democrat is undone before the next republican is up for reelection, but it will take a full 8 years to undo the damage done by a republican over a single term. And voting harder will not change that.
I’ve previously mentioned my gripes with the EC and FPTP voting, and their impact on the presidential election, but my cynicism is furthered by my disenfranchisement with Biden. I voted for him in 2020, foolishly believing that “we can push him left” and I was ecstatic to see him walk into office after the inauguration. But I feel betrayed to a huge degree, and since then I’ve ben pulled further left as I read more about politics.
For me, his bizarre stances are a gut punch. I can half forgive him for his student loans forgiveness from being shot down, though I feel like he quit real early on it and failed to approach it from another angle. I hate his border policy, as it is continuing what trump was planning with the wall while claiming otherwise, and then he tries his best to look tough on the border, a problem that only exists for electioneering’s sake. Well, there is a problem at the border, but it isn’t what the framing of the discussion is about (See No Wall They Can Build by Crimethinc, its a wonderful free book and audiobook/podcast). His current and historic positions on crime is barbaric. Tough on crime is, for the most part, a racist dogwhistle that many people either fail to see or callously ignore when they realize that americans are having a moment and need to be reassured that crime is bad and they oppose it, even though there is no surge in crime. His active stance aiding and abetting genocide while trying to appear like he is pushing back on Israel fills me with such disgust that I could never see myself supporting him again.
I’ve heard similar thoughts quite a few times from other people on the left, notably Anark and FD Signifire, and their opinions on Obama, which are very sturdy takes IMHO.
Finally, I think that we are really seeing how the american liberal democracy will continue to operate, and how it cannot fix itself. The separation of powers is flimsier than the founding fathers intended, and power is entrenched in such a way that the levers of power cannot be pushed or pulled in another direction. It would take a lifetime of work to grease the gears enough to make the levers movable, but that’s not feasible with the climate-collapse shaped cliff we are set to drive off, unless we kick the elephant and jackass out of the car asap. Anyone who advocates a hierarchical system like this one will inevitably create the same scenario for our great-grandchildren to deal with.
This is because this is the endpoint of any hierarchic system. Any hierarchical system will attract the worst people to it, be it the fascist, or the person supporting fascism a few countries over, since attaining power requires a single victory. A single won election, legitimate or illegitimate, will result in significant damage. If you combine this with the motivations of capitalism empowering those who take the worst actions possible, a capitalist democracy does seem like the worst combination possible. No matter how secure the controls on power is, it will be misused, legally or not. Enough lawyers working for enough time will find necessary loopholes to crack things wide open, even if their theories hold as much power as unitary executive theory.
/vent
Once again, direct action is the answer. If you plan your actions with means that match your ends, and carefully consider your praxis, you can begin to make an impact. Considering the big problem stems from hierarchical power structures, you need to make your structures non-hierarchical (AKA horizontal) if you want to prevent it from suffering the flaws of hierarchy, or remaking it in the end. With a lot of hard work, you can begin to create the new in the shell of the old, a democratic system that is empowered by the people to carry out their needs, not controlled by unaccountable politicians who claim to support you.
“We live in capitalism - its power can seem inescapable. But so did the divine right of kings.”
- Ursula K Le Guin
I’m not sure if you’ve heard this take/direction of argument before, but if you haven’t, check out libertarian socialism, and its submovements. I promise it isn’t cringe like the conservative libertarians who stole our label >:( (fuck you murray rothbard, i hope your company with reagan, kissinger, and thatcher in the pits of hell is eternally uncomfortable)
Crimethinc has a good intro book “From Democracy to Freedom” that summarizes my takes, as an anarchist. It’s quite short, but even if you don’t find anarchism your cup of tea, it will certainly be an interesting read. If you find the anarchist label scary, at least give the book a try because the common conception of anarchists is inaccurate, and it usually just finds itself being an insult levied by hierarchs who don’t want to cede ground. For the most part we are just your local activists who are feeding the needy, setting up community centers, or organizing your labor unions, easing the suffering under capitalism while dreaming and acting towards a better future. And we have vegan/freegan cookies.
I really do need to check out Margaret’s show. I really enjoy when she does other shows with Robert, since for someone who’s life is so much the opposite of my own, I feel she is very relatable most of the time. I’ve been opened up to many things that would never have been on my radar thanks to her.
Wrapping my head around all the -isms has been a lot of work. You need to learn what they are in both historical and modern context, and that varies from person to person as it is, so it can be hard to get what everyone is always advocating even if they use the same words.
I quick read the wiki entry on libertarian socialism, and I feel a lot of my values would support those concepts. But I wonder how tenable any of these systems are. We have much in the last century or so to credit to anarchists and socialists, but why do these values not seem to take hold on a larger scale? It feels like that need for hierarchy is built into us as a species as it seems to be the default through much of history. While one can find hundreds of years of “success” in empires, kingdoms, and democracies/democratic republics, where are these times or places for socialism and anarchism were something permanent is established? The major events I’m aware of at this point feel more like a reshuffling of the deck of a vertical power structure, but not a changing of the system itself.
State socialism is an option, but that still is overseen by a person/body, which feels is a great way to backslide into where China and Russia are at, which seems worse off than were the US and most other democratic states are.
So I’m not against most of the Lemmy Left in concept, I’d just rather see helpful post and comments like you and I are having than what feels like a leftist version of a FOX News comments section of everybody complaining, but not bringing anything useful to the party. We all need to vent and all, but it feels like that’s the bulk of what I see on here now, and I dont really remember it being that way 9 months ago when I first hopped over here with everyone else. Us talking here is great, but now this chat is something deep in the comments of a bad post no one will ever revisit and it’s covering too many topics to be really digestible. If this was what this group did all the time, I feel it’d be a much better product than what it currently is. I’d rather have a place on Lemmy to be made aware of these direct action groups and their current goings on than everyone just rehashing bad takes from mainstream media. It seems we all think it’s crap, so why do we insist on bringing it here?
But thank you again for giving me specific things to read more about. I was raised conservative until I got to know some people who acted much like you are here that helped me to gain a better perspective and to see the things that I valued weren’t being supported by those I thought I was supposed to trust. These conversations are what I feel political discourse should be. I guess these moments are the smallest and simplest direct actions we can take and are the foundation of anything bigger.
These are some pretty good questions, and ones that are not particularly uncommon. (I also promise this will be the last long post I make lmao, you are absolutely right about this being an empty room to speak in)
but why do these [anarchist/libertarian socialist] values not seem to take hold on a larger scale?
Depends on what you mean by a larger scale. There’s nothing at the scale of a large country like the US in the current day, or at the current population. but, as detailed in “The Dawn of Everything” by anthropologist David Graeber and David Wengrow, pre-colonial america has some very anarchistic organizational structures that were successful in their right.
There are also currently some anarchistic projects. While they’re technically not pure anarchism, the Zapatista and Rojava experiments are ongoing, and have some solid achievements (they consider themselves a different libertarian socialist branch that is very similar to anarchism, being neozapitismo and social ecology respectively). One interesting thing I’d love to point out is that these experiments are actually closer to socialism (and I’d arguably say are close to achieving it in both cases) compared to supposedly socialist/communist countries such as the USSR, the CCP, and Cuba. Here are two videos summarizing the two movements.
It feels like that need for hierarchy is built into us as a species as it seems to be the default through much of history.
First and foremost, the necessity of hierarchy being built into us would only be true if there was no horizontal (non-hierarchical) society in the past, but there have been many, as mentioned in “The Dawn of Everything”.
I mean, it might feel like that considering we live in a world where we don’t really see any alternative to the status quo. There’s this concept of “Capitalist realism,” where it becomes increasingly difficult to consider a world where there is no capitalism. We are told we live in “The End of History”, where “There is no alternative”, as put by Fukuyama and Thatcher. The same can be said for hierarchy, as we live in a hierarchic world that is simply “the way things are” as a social construct. But what says we can’t tear it down? For many years there was the natural hierarchy of the divine monarch at the top and the peasant suffering under their boot. To the peasant, there was no alternative; the monarch had to be there. But in reality the monarch didn’t have to be there.
Anarchists do have an answer for this (Well, there’s quite a few, but I find this one simplest), which is the theory of practice. Essentially, many things are learned by people, including societal norms. Take a highly hierarchic culture like south korea, where the hierarchies enforced by their version of Confucianism is dominant. There is no organ in the human body that forces humans to be hierarchic in accordance to Confucianism from birth. Instead, people are taught that it is" the natural order", then practice said hierarchic order, making it reality. By the practice of said hierarchies, it becomes real. However, if you are raised in such a society, it would be difficult to see an alternative, unless you begin to practice a different hierarchic order.
On the other hand, what if we begin making a society that isn’t hierarchic? What if instead of instilling the values of obedience, we tell people obedience is not a virtue? What if we tell people that there is no natural reason to live under such a hierarchy, and that they could set themselves free? What if we instill values of self-governance, and let people practice self governance.
This is why anarchists often approach spreading anarchy in what might not seem an intuitive way. You might see an anarchist organizing a union, or creating a mutual aid group, or making a chapter of Food Not Bombs. If we consider the fact that practice influences the way you think, then it only makes sense that creating a non-hierarchic structure such as an anarchistic union, mutual aid group, etc. When non-anarchists participate in these structures, they begin to practice anarchism, and dreaming of a non-hierarchic world becomes much easier. Unfortunately it’s kinda hard to get people to participate in some of these structures under the increasingly individualist modes of capitalism, but it is still a viable path that will need to adapt to the changing times.
Wrapping my head around all the -isms has been a lot of work. You need to learn what they are in both historical and modern context, and that varies from person to person as it is, so it can be hard to get what everyone is always advocating even if they use the same words.
I’ve had a fun experience talking with someone at a protest, and we were agreeing with many things broadly speaking. He eventually was like “What type of communist are you”, and I just said “Oh, I’m an anarchist” and he, a trot, was disappointed. I’ve also had a discussion with a different random person who was on board with literally everything I said in a discussion, barring a few implementation details. He then decried the communists and anarchists for their radical ideas 🤦♂️.
As far as current and historic context, check out “Means and Ends” by Zoe Baker. I’ve not gotten to reading it yet but a wonderful lady at my local Anarchist bookfair told me it was not only a good starting place for historical context to the movement, but it is also wonderfully written. Also, you’ll be pleased to know that the differences between old and modern anarchism isn’t too drastic. It’s more refined than changed. There’s some splinters and splits, but even the biggest differences are smaller when compared to how other leftist thought has developed.
As far as -isms, I totally get that. -isms are often used as an insult, such as when trump tried to insult all the cool people, which tends to devalue the fact that in many cases there is a huge amount of philosophy behind the idea (not that it makes the philosophy or the ideology good) and conversely elevates more mainstream politics by turning alternatives into an ideological insult, even if their philosophy and ideologies are kinda trash.
So I’m not against most of the Lemmy Left in concept, I’d just rather see helpful post and comments like you and I are having than what feels like a leftist version of a FOX News comments section of everybody complaining, but not bringing anything useful to the party. We all need to vent and all, but it feels like that’s the bulk of what I see on here now
First, thanks :)
I think you are right, but probably in a way you weren’t thinking. When I watch FOX I always feel like I’m missing some context even though I am seeing a story beginning to end. I don’t see this on mainstream lemmy, but interestingly I do sometimes see it on Hexbear. I think that’s because I’m immersed in leftist culture, and there is a shared cultural understanding that I share with the left in general that the average conservative would share with FOX. I’m not a Marxist-Leninist, and sometimes I’ll see a take on hexbear that catches me off guard, since I lack the ML viewpoint and shared culture. And just like FOX, I don’t think that the average lemmy user will have the most nuanced and carefully examined takes (myself included, though I am getting better at discussing some topics after actually doing it more often) that makes their political discussion uneasy, but at least most of them lack the bigotry.
I dont really remember it being that way 9 months ago when I first hopped over here with everyone else
I remember occasionally seeing it. But not at this level. I think a lot of people are getting radicalized by the genocide and seeing the two genocide lovers on a ballot and are having a justifiably angry reaction. Also, election season is in full swing, so the internet will be infested with political discourse for a little while, and not the kind that is fun, pleasant, or interesting.
I was raised conservative until I got to know some people who acted much like you are here that helped me to gain a better perspective and to see the things that I valued weren’t being supported by those I thought I was supposed to trust
Me too. I was born in a deeply christian family, and I identified as a conservative libertarian after becoming politically active. IDK how I’d be doing right now if I was still conservative. Now, I’m queer, and while I still suffer the unfortunate position of having to be in the closet to prevent my family from exploding, having that feeling of shame and regret consume myself from the inside out would be 100x worse if my politics and religion made me objectively bad for it.
Thankfully I talked with some of my friends I had in a political science class I took in high school around the time Bernie started campaigning. At this time I was having some doubts about capitalism that I never shook off from seeing some good critiques of capitalism itself, and my libertarian ideology. I was pulled further left, and eventually surpassed them on my journey to becoming a socialist with a libertarian edge. I haven’t looked back.
Granted, I’ve only really reconsidered politics recently when evaluating the absolute shitshow that’s been american politics. While I was becoming increasingly anarchistic when studying theory, I can definitely say that I was radicalized by the ongoing genocide. The mechanisms that worked to justify the existence of an apartheid state, to justify the ongoing genocide, and to execute it are fueled by the state to further it’s positions, which doesn’t exactly give the it a good look. Once again, I went on this journey with a friend who was also becoming more radical.
Thank you for all your time and great list of resources.
I did check out Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff since I spotted a Kind Ludd episode. It turns out I had Margaret and Garrison mixed up in my head, but I like all the CoolZone people.
I’ll have to look more into direct action programs available in my area. It seems like it provides much more instant gratification than voting ever will! 😁
It’s been a pleasure talking with you, and good luck with all your efforts! If you ever need a positivity break on here, be sure to come by !superbowl@lemmy.world where I do highlight a bunch of direct to animal action. That’s where I spend the majority of my Lemmy time.
