@cobweb I am curious too. By default you can set a size like this ![[image.png|pixels]]
Aligning an #image can be done using a #CSS like below and embed it like this ![[image.png#center|300]] but it’s a hassle to edit text along side the image when not in source mode.
the doomerism w/in the western "#left" just tells me that we need more #intergenerational organizing spaces. older activists tell me how far we've come. identifying #capitalism as a root cause to our issues was uncommon 10 years ago. #abolition wasn't taken seriously 5 years ago. most people didn't know about #palestine 5 years ago!
activists have made such great strides. the ruling class is running out of excuses. why else are they using such violence twds us right now?
Saw Civil War today. It was incredible. Safe to say the moral of the movie is "be careful what you wish for". If you're worried about being beaten over the head with politics, this movie does not even broach it. I know that sounds impossible, but it's true. The only problem (or the good thing?) is that both sides of the political spectrum will see themselves as the heroes.
A #christian can be an ally to the #left. #Christ, was arguably a #leftist.
A #christizan must always be fought with the intensity of a thousand suns. They’re inverse christians — we call them #nazi.
The #ConservativePartnershipInstitute (#CPI) has become a breeding ground for the next generation of #Trump loyalists & an incubator for policies he might pursue. Its fast growth is raising questions.
Mitchell was among ~150 #conservative#donors …who gathered …to celebrate the ascendancy of a group that has become a well-paying sinecure for #Trump allies & an incubator for the policies TFG could pursue if elected. The participants toted gift bags in the sunshine & swapped golf clothes for business attire at a dinner where they applauded as 2 Black speakers— #BenCarson …& Rep #ByronDonalds of FL —extolled conservative values while condemning the racial #identity#politics of the #left.
Sono almeno 112 i morti e centinaia i feriti tra le persone che si sono accalcate spinte dalla disperazione intorno a un camion nella speranza di ricevere aiuti alimentari. Testimoni e il corrispondente di Al Jazeera sul posto hanno riportato che le persone sono state attaccate con proiettili di artiglieria, missili di droni e colpi di arma da fuoco
John Pavlovitz hits the nail on the head regarding how fatuous "progressives" in the US continuously snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and serve the ends of the hard right as we tear away at each other and refuse solidarity with each other on the basis of ridiculous dogmatic purity politics.
Spend only a day on social media and you see this over and over and over again. We do not learn and don't want to learn.
We could be world leader in a strong immerging market of "green jobs", but why not forsake that long term growth opportunity for short term financial gain?
“In blocking the left from a visible political presence, in stifling its ideas and creativity in a time of crisis, Starmer is leaving the field open to the far right. They will be only too eager to highlight and exploit the deficiencies of a soulless Labour Party @UKLabour, one that pays no more than lip service to resolving #Britain’s problems.
And they will doubtless also scapegoat the usual suspects - not the rich, not those in power, but immigrants, Jews and ‘communists’ - who will be blamed for bringing the UK to its knees.
Ultimately, the smearing of #Corbyn and the Labour #Left will bring about the very things the Labour right and the establishment media claim they seek to avert: Britain will become a darker, more racist, more #authoritarian place.”
#Activism#Left#MassProtests#Revolution: "The lessons that Bevins’s defeated protesters offer at the end of If We Burn bear repeating: plan for the day after; progress isn’t inevitable, and a better world doesn’t automatically emerge from protest; hierarchy isn’t an enemy; if you reject representation, someone else will represent you; cultural visibility and political power are separate things; power rushes to fill a void. Surprisingly, many of these interviewees are convinced that the past decade was just the beginning. That’s something the defeated often tell themselves, but in truth it’s hard to see world politics calming down. Some hanker after the old parties, but attempts to synthesise the best of both worlds – ‘networked Leninism’, in Rodrigo Nunes’s half-joking phrase – might be a better way."
People on the #left: Don’t be fooled by right-wing claims that #unions & #strikes are ”anti-market”. On the contrary, they exist precisely because big business is anti-market.
In a #market#economy, everyone sets their price. A market that offers better working conditions for skilled workers, moves workers where they are happier.
But in a #monopoly, there is no option. For a worker bound to a location (due to family etc), the local factory is a de-facto monopoly.
Friends, please start tagging your posts with content warnings. Otherwise I’m going to miss your messages as I indiscriminately mute and block you for being indiscriminate outrage posters.
The point where regular union folks are uncritically sharing threads with takes like the IDF killed most Israeli civilians on Oct 7, is where it may no longer be possible to avoid a total breakdown between the #Left and #Jewish people. Not because there aren't leftist Jews (many), Jews in solidarity with Palestinians (many), but because it's a sign that antisemitic conspiracy narratives have become endemic in the Left.
Which is a shame, because actually we really need each other. Nu nu.
We need to build better communities of care and support, desperately.
With how our society keeps refusing to acknowledge the pandemic (covid levels are so high in my state right now that it's dangerous to go out), it makes existing with other people even harder, and often disabled, marginalized folks like me get left behind. Forgotten, and it shouldn't be that way. It feels like the Left is so caught up with reacting to the Right's evils, that we've forgotten how to build up communities of solidarity and liberation.
We should be engaging in collective community care. We should be building that together and not eating up the isolating consumerist culture that late-stage-capitalism throws at us.
We need more media networks focused on building up communities of care and communities based on liberation. We need more support for our most vulnerable and to build that up for all people. We need to create alternate ways of giving and receiving that does not fall prey to the consumerist demands of capitalism. We need to support alternative ways of being that is focused on care, agency, creativity, cooperation, and liberation.
The right built up a powerhouse with its grassroots initiatives to an alarming extent, and it's how this mess we're in got worse.
Yes, we must tear down the racist, transphobic, xenophobic, ableist, homophobic, colonalist, sexist system -- but we must ALSO build up an alternative. We can do both at the same time. This isn't an either/or, and right now? We desperately need to build up that alternative because things are going to get worse if we don't stop all oil and coal use, if we don't stop the rise of fascism, if we don't stop the genocides. Climate change is currently intensifying the suffering, and those in power are using that intensification to consolidate fascism.
In the "Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism," John P. Clark wrote: "Over the past generation of radical social theory, we have heard a great deal more about the 'microphysics of power' than we have about the microecology of community. The dominance of the former approach is, I think, less a reflection of the inherent superiority of poststructuralist analysis than a symptom of the defensive nature of oppositional culture in our time. A heavy focus on the 'physics' of the system of power, and the depiction of social action in terms of various 'strategies' and 'tactics' shaped largely in reaction to this system betrays a certain level of capitulation to a dominant mechanistic, objectifying order. There has been a widespread assumption -- not only among post modernist and poststructuralist theorists, but also among political activists -- that the historical destiny of opposition is essentially a future of permanent struggle against the system of power. For many, the highest aspirations of oppositional culture seem to lie in small tactical gains within a fundamentally immovable system and in forms of enjoyment and creativity possible through struggles within the vast labyrinth of power."
Here Clark calls out the reactionary politics that the Left has fallen into, where we've lost that sense of community and instead react to the horrors with 'strategy' and tactics' without laying a groundwork of community to support one another through our process of dismantling a harmful system. This reactionary politics views the system as immovable and a fact of life, when it is anything but.
He writes: "The ideology of permanent struggle embodies some important truths about our creative resources in the face of dominations, but unless these truths are placed within a larger, more affirmative problematic, they easily become a recipe for disillusionment and nihilism. Such a larger problematic underlies the microecology of community. This approach undertakes a careful exploration of the nature and possibilities of community at the molecular level of society, and directs our hopes and efforts toward a project of regenerating human society and liberating human creative powers through engagement in that project. It sets out from the assumption that society, no matter how mechanized and objectified it may become, always remains an organic, dynamic, dialectically developing whole, the product of human creative activity in interaction with the natural world of which it is an inseparable part. Society is shaped by human thought, imagination, and transformative activity, and is not least of all, the result of the kind of primary relationships that humans beings enter into with one another."
Here Clark describes how community and the relationships we build with another shapes society. Without community and building relationships with one another, we fall prey to the false idea that liberation is only a struggle against domination -- an oppositional strategy. Except, that's not the full picture. Liberation is never just about a struggle against opposition. Liberation is about creating a community beneficial for all, an alternative to the dominant oppression, as well as a strategy/tactics that dismantle the oppression. It's a multifaceted approach that builds up more than it tears down.
Clark continues: "It has been suggested that the most immediate concern in a renewed radical politics must be the creation of strong, thriving communities of solidarity and liberation. Such a form of community is one that is engaged deeply in the quest for communal freedom..."
Our freedom cannot be realized without community.
He writes: "It is the process of replacing a system of domination of the person and community through force, violence, and coercion with a system of voluntary, mutualistic cooperation. It is the process of replacing the domination of the person and community through exploitation, manipulation, and instrumentalization for the sake of power with a system of personal and communal self-realization. And it is in the process of replacing the domination of the person and community through alienation and objectification with a system based on agency, self-determination, and free self-expression."
He provides a crucial call out on progressives: "The respectable Left long ago decided that this discourse [of liberation] was too dangerous, and decided to label itself and its aims as 'progressive.' It is no secret that 'progressive' was invented in part as a euphemism for 'liberal,' the political orientation that dares not speak its name. But the term has also become a generic label for virtually anything that is vaguely to the Left, or begins to look Left in a political culture increasingly dominated by the Right. Thus, the rise of 'progressivism' has been an eminently regressive development. The abandonment of terms such as 'women's liberation,' 'Black liberation,' and 'gay [LGBT] liberation,' has coincided with the marginalization of the remnants of what were once called 'freedom movements,' and the co-optation of their issues by the dominant political interests. In the end, the discourse of 'freedom' and 'liberty' has largely been conceded to conservatives and right-wing 'libertarians,' with lamentable consequences. The dominance of the negative, individualist concept of freedom as 'being left alone' goes almost unchallenged, while the positive, social concept of freedom as collective agency and participation in many-sided communal self-realization is seldom mentioned. It is in this context that the concept of the communities of solidarity and liberation takes on crucial importance."
This callout is really needed because we have ceded far too much to the right in regards to terms, communities, and approaches to society. If we truly wish to stop the rise of fascism and its subsequent genocides and oppression, then we need to do more than just react to the bad. We need to tear down at the same time we build up our own grassroots communities.
Clark continues: "It is essential that we look for inspiration for the emergence of such communities not only in certain neglected chapters in the long and diverse history of radical and revolutionary movements, but also in contemporary examples of grassroots, community-based social reorganizations across the globe. It is crucial that we understand how the successes of reactionary movements (and most notably those of the religious Right) have resulted in large part from their achievements in community buildings, in grassroots organizations, and in the creation of organizational forms that fulfill primary social needs. We must understand the way in which both successful liberation movements and successful reactionary ones have created small communities that embody a highly articulated set of values, ideas, beliefs, images, symbols, rituals, and practices, and integrated these communities into a large social movement."
Here Clark points out how the Left has neglected to examine the radical and revolutionary movements -- especially those in the Global South -- created a strong, liberatory community in their fight against oppression, and it is how they won those fights. Such as the 'Arabic Spring' that happened a decade or so ago, where strong communities of liberation toppled dictators. It wasn't reactionary politics that did that. It was a strong community built on solidarity and liberation, that provided for one another's primary needs, while also sharing a common foundation that intensifies that sense of belonging and collective care.
This is what we need to be building. This is what the Left desperately needs if we want to defeat the rise of the Fascist Right and their genocidal campaigns. Our foundation of care, solidarity, agency, communal self-realization, creativity, and liberation exists in the communities we build with one another, and provides us with the strength in which to stand up and tear down the systems of harm and oppression.
#Netherlands#Left#FarRight: "The Dutch left, in particular the center-left, has responded to this diminishing share of the vote by developing an anxious style of electoral politics — equally shaken by and in awe of the successes of (far) right juggernauts. It has failed to hear the wake-up call to rebuild and recalibrate its own ideology. In spite of two decades of diminishing electoral returns, the (center-) left has not pursued a consistent effort to shift the terms of the political debate or regrow its share of the vote.
Last week’s election did nothing to reverse this trend — nor does it seem like anything will change soon. While the victory by Geert Wilders’s right-wing extremist Party for Freedom (PVV) suggests a major reshuffling of the Dutch political landscape, its gains mostly came from people who already voted for the (center-) right. Gains and losses for other parties, too, predominantly came from voters within their own political families or closely adjacent groups in the leaky center.
Over the past two decades, left-wing parties pursued fruitless strategies of parroting more “palatable” versions of far-right, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim rhetoric in an effort to win back (mostly mythical) blue-collar voters supposed to have been “lost” to the populist right. In other moods, the PvdA presented itself as a responsible and capable party willing to do the dirty work of governing, courting nominally progressive voters in the center.
GL-PvdA leader Timmermans gave one of the clearest expressions of that anxious style in the lead-up to last week’s election when he argued, as a guest on a popular podcast, that while he would like to be like Bernie Sanders, in order to win, he must act like Joe Biden."
I’ve been a #progressive my entire life. I’ve had exposure to/been friends with people from the tiny #farleft. I thought they were harmless, hopelessly anachronistic believers of a dead #ideology with like 1-2% adherents. But people lean on ideology in crises and in #israel#hamas#gaza we see how irrational it is. Adherents are not allowed to say #hamas deliberately stoked the crisis. Not allowed to discuss how an axis of terrorists, Iran and a blood soaked dictator in #syria want this crisis.
And beyond this crisis, the #farleft is unprincipled about which #imperialism they will decry. That millions in Ukraine are displaced, 10,000s dead, tens of thousands of children kidnapped doesn’t matter because it’s not the #West or US imperialism. The #left supports a bankrupt dogmatic ideology. It’s as hollow and fake as MAGA #nationalism. That #Assad barrel bombed citizens and hospitals to dust, ignore it. That mafioso #putin in #oligarchy#russia supports the global #farright, ignore it…
Guy I knew had a phrase, "can't stand prosperity." It refers to people who can't take good news, who have to turn it into bad news.
That's a lot of you. STOP IT.
See link. Is this a complete victory? No. Is it a step? Yes.
The response of a lot of lefties is "that's not perfect so it's shit, and you're shit for being happy about it." Not those exact words, but close, and it's exactly the attitude.
If that's not what you mean you react that way, then here's the correct response:
"Fuck yeah! Now let's make them do [the next step]."
Because "that's shit and you're wrong for being happy?" THAT'S NOT ANALYSIS, THAT'S SELF-SABOTAGE AND AIDING THE ENEMY.
Hey Democrats! Why don't you start doing something useful instead of telling us to fear Trump!? Hes a 77 year old criminal who is hate by everyone. If the Democrats are sooo cool why can't they convice the American people that they are better than the worst president in history???
Instead Biden knows he is also hated by everyone so the only way he can continue his assault on the working class is to get us all involved in several wars which will make him a wartime president!
We had a society before these assholes and we don't need them to ruin our futures!!!