WrittenInRed [any]
Worse in general or just in regard to Palestine? Obviously he’s so much worse in general, which is why I did vote for Harris. But specifically on the issue of Palestine no matter what the genocide wasn’t stopping, the Biden admin made it pretty clear there wasn’t actually a red line Israel could cross that would end the supply of weapons, considering every one they did make was blown past with no consequences. And Harris repeatedly signified that wouldn’t have changed.
But it’s also not productive to try and assign blame to people who didn’t vote, or voted 3rd party, though. The problem isn’t that people didn’t want to vote for the conservative party instead of the fascist party, its that we only had those 2 options to pick from. Obviously one of them was less harmful overall, but that doesn’t make them meaningfully better for Palestine, or even a good/appealing choice. Our entire political system was built to represent slaveowners and rich white men, and that’s so deeply ingrained into every aspect of its design that there’s no way to move away from those roots from within the system. Even if Trump lost this time, what’s stopping him from running again? Or the next version of him? Or what about the continued corporate capture of the government and both parties? None of those can just be voted away, and placing responsibility for fixing things entirely on voting just wastes time that would be better spent organizing while they continue to fester and grow.
Yeah I know it’s technically visible, but unless I’m just dumb afaik the default ui doesn’t have a way to easily see which mod did an action unless you manually filter by every mod it could be. Since it is possible to do that it’s really not a huge deal, just something that could help prevent misunderstandings.
Oh also something I just realized, they basically want to force mods to debate misinformation, which is literally a tatic used to spread disinformation in the first place. By getting people to debunk a ridiculous claim it lends credence to the idea as something worth discussing and also spreads it to more people. I feel like the intentions behind this are noble, but it’s been proven that presenting evidence doesn’t really get people to change their opinion all that often. The whole thing is super misguided.
I’ll also say I’m in support of removing the “no tankie” rule. I’m all for anti-authoritarianism, but with how often tankie gets misued on Lemmy at large having the rules specifically use it always kinda felt like just a potential avenue for removing general left-wing stuff. Not that it has been used for that on 196 necessarily, or that it will be in this community, but it still feels like tankie is a loaded enough term that just having more specific rules is better.
Like you said sectarianism sucks, and right now in the US at least it I’d say solidarity is more important than ideological differences. I’m super anarchist, but if a ML is also attending protests, building mutual aid, and fighting for immigrants and trans people then who am I to exclude them when currently the more support the better. (There are arguments for why this viewpoint is wrong or right, and whether solidarity with authoritarianism in fighting existing power structures is counter-intuitive or not, but it also doesn’t feel like those arguments apply as much in something like 196 imo.)
(Also 100℅ agree on adding misogyny. Obviously the list of prejudices isn’t exhaustive or anything but misogyny is a big one and it feels like it should definitely be there.)
I had to look it up the first time I saw this meme too lol. Prideflags.org is super useful to try and reverse search for a prideflag. It doesn’t have this one but it tends to be the first place I go to if I don’t recognize a flag.
In addition to the other replies, there’s also quite a large difference between the actions of a foreign government doing something our current government already considers human rights abuse and the actions of a foreign government defended by our own, carried out with weapons manufactured and supplied by us, and where any criticism or protest of said support is categorized by nearly every politician as either antisemitism or tacit support of republican extremism. Both are genocide, but trying to protest the actions of the Chinese government as a US citizen in the US is pretty pointless, it’s better to focus efforts where it has a more direct impact. You don’t need to evenly split your attention between every single issue in order to be allowed to talk about any of them.
I mean in that sort of case then the group would defer to the person more knowledgeable in that specialty, same as what happens when after brainstorming people split into small groups or volunteer for individual responsibilities. Crowdsourced decision making is meant to be for the bigger aspects, stuff like what the end goal of a project should be. Smaller, extremely specialized aspects should get handled by those best equipped for it, that’s not a hierarchy. Listening to an expert is just respecting someone’s knowledge, and as long as they don’t have actual authority over you, then there’s much less risk of corruption taking place. There’s a quote from I think Proudhon Bakunin that I can’t remember off the top of my head, I’ll come back and edit this when I find it. But effectively, it boils down to the difference between authority as in power over people, and authority as in knowledge.
And people who help organize and manage jobs also don’t necessarily need to be part of a hierarchy either. If the group agrees that someone is extremely effective at helping resolve conflicts or suggesting the best path to take and that sort of role is desirable for the project then that’s what they should do. The difference is that they aren’t in a position of power over anyone. They don’t have the unilateral ability to fire someone (nor does any individual), or take away their income/ability to live. And since they don’t have that power, they aren’t in a hierarchical position over anyone. If they start trying to force their way without taking feedback then the group will stop listening to them and appoint someone else if they still feel that it’d be useful. Without a position of authority over people no hierarchy exists in the definition used in anarchist theory.
Edit: Thanks @onoira@lemmy.dbzer0.com! Knew I read it somewhere on here recently.
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.
— Mikhail Bakunin, God and the state, Chapter 2
But yeah, respecting peoples expertise in topics, splitting up work, or appointing people to give managerial suggestions aren’t hierarchical. A lack of hierarchy is not a lack of structure, it’s just a lack of power and violence being used to oppress or control people. Efficient structures like these tend to naturally fall out of self-organization once the monopolies on violence used to prop up hierarchies are removed.
Yeah but that’s kinda the point. Liberalism is also right-wing compared to leftists, and even on it’s own is pretty firmly center to slighly right of center. Left of center only really happens at social democracies, and they’re still not super far left. Obviously someone in the middle of the Democrats and Republicans will also be right-wing, since neither party is actually left of center and the Republicans are currently so far right.
So basically basically Republicans are super harmful to a ton of people and meeting in the the middle of democrats and republicans is still bad, and compromising on certain issues by doing that sort of meet in the middle approach still hurts people right? Don’t want to put words in your mouth or anything like that.
Anarchists or other very left-wing people have basically the same opinion on liberalism. It’s a very middle of the road ideology that’s favors incremental progress but doesn’t really make real change on its own, that normally has to be fought for outside the system. The Democrats are less immediately harmful to people, but neither party really does anything big enough to truly help people in a meaningful way and things have been slowly getting worse over time. And just like there are a bunch of policies you wouldn’t want to meet in the middle of, there are a bunch of things liberalism supports that are meeting in the middle of something very harmful.
I think the other big thing is the prevalence of the idea that voting for a representative is the most important thing you can do that also wears on people. Whether or not Trump or Harris won, over half the US states are unsafe for trans people, especially kids. Sure things are obviously worse with Trump, but either way for a lot of trans people things have been bad and getting worse for a long time. Same with food insecurity, housing costs, immigration, etc. All of these issues wouldn’t have meaningfully improved much with the tiny concessions that Democrats offered, and most would continue getting largely ignored until a Republican takes office and can be blamed.
I’m not saying the parties are the same, one moves us in this negative direction much faster which I why I’ve basically voted D every time I could, but voting is at most the minimum you should do. Building aid networks and horizontal power and networks to protect queer people or immigrants are all things that need to happen no matter who is in power because either way compromises and the slow advance of capitalism continues to hurt more and more people.
None of this is a person attack against you or anything either, but the way you don’t like Republicans for being too far right or centrists for being too middle of the road with fascism/the Republican party are the same basic reasons leftists dislike liberalism.
I’ve rewritten this a few times with various points I was trying to make, but for the sake of not having a wall of text I’ll try to keep it short lol.
For the whole tankie discussion, I saw @LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works mentioned imperialism, and it made me think that the whole rule should probably be reworded imo
The big thing is that it feels like the whole debate is mostly based on semantics, so that should be fixed if possible. It basically boils down to what “tankie” means or is perceived to mean. As written the rule uses ideological labels to try and represent a broader set of beliefs, but the main issue with that is that by picking those sorts of imprecise labels it sort of muddies what specific kind of beliefs the rule is trying to highlight. Especially with tankie (and even more so on Lemmy), lots of different people use it to label very different things. Even if the rules are using it “correctly”, there’s still enough disagreement surrounding the term overall that it seems worth it to just elaborate more specifically on what it’s actually trying to refer to. Doing so helps prevent some misunderstandings that might happen between users and mods as to what is covered by this rule, means that new users who have been incorrectly called a tankie elsewhere on lemmy don’t see the term and assume they’ll also be banned here, and also just generally makes the rules more clear which is never a bad thing.
Maybe something like:
Support or defense of authoritarianism is not welcome.This includes but is not limited to: imperialism, nationalism, genocide denial, ethnic or racial supremacy, fascism, nazism, etc."
I feel like that covers the problematic stuff from any type of authoritarianism. Could even be safe and make it something to the effect of “Support or defense of authoritarianism, regardless of the state, is not welcome…” to make sure it’s explicit.