[dude with glasses in a communist t-shirt, arguing] I’m the only leftist here, your opinions are TRASH
[dude holding a theory book on smug, arguing] Read theory you losers, you’re all WRONG
[dude in an anarchist hoodie, arguing] Nuh-uh, I’m the only leftist here, you’re SHITLIBS
[the three dudes are now caught in a cartoon fight, glasses gone flying, punches everywhere, while a firing squad of nazis are targeting them with rifles]
[a confused nazi asks] Why… why are they still arguing?
Actually maybe we shouldn’t call it “left politics”, just “human politics”, because it’s politics for the human, not for some mega-corps.
The People’s Front of Judea vs the Judean People’s Front
People, people, people, we can kill each other AFTER the fascist are gone, please and thank you.
Chinese civil war be like:
bLuE nO mAtTeR wHo unless it’s an actual progressive 😮💨
This thread keeps popping up and it just clicked and I had to ask:
Is the guy in the red shirt supposed to be Vaush?
Would be funny considering how much Vaush hates Marxism-Leninism.
It’s the factory preset look for these pseudo-tankies that show up in my local activism group every now and then.
Always the big earring, unkempt beard, this specific shape of glasses, and the cheap aliexpress t-shirt with a political message on it.
Not my fault Vaush stole the look!
pseudo-tankies
I’m not even sure whether this is supposed to be an insult anymore. Is a “tankie” better or worse than a “fake tankie”?
In a thread complaining about leftist infighting, there’s a special irony in liberals singing out a leftist who is simultaneously too far left and not far left enough.
It’s a specific type of leftist we have in my country, french communists are a… special breed, let’s say.
In the 1980s our communist party bulldozed a migrant worker dormitory because they hated migrants that much. Red MAGA or something. The party recovered from that era, but french communists are still chauvinistic, xenophobic, and strangely not that much into anti-imperialism (which is meant to be the redeeming quality of tankies). They do however share with tankies the traits of applying “class first” logic to a lot of conversations, which makes them deathly allergic to intersectionality, and being terminally online and way into infighting. Thus they usually end up booted from actual activist groups, since they tend to hold us back and prevent us from actually getting shit done in the streets.
Hence me calling them pseudo-tankies because it’s hard to label them. We just call them tankies here: they’re members of a party that supported the crushing of the hungarian uprising with soviet tanks, and is ambiguous about tienanmen (no denying it happened but very alt-history about it), so pro-tanks they are.
I have an easier time getting along with the average online american tankie than with our local communist party’s members.
The party recovered from that era, but french communists are still chauvinistic, xenophobic, and strangely not that much into anti-imperialism
Yeah, that’s been a problem in the US as well, under “Patriotic Communism”. But it’s also largely artificial - a product of party decay to the point that fascists can sock puppet the leftist labels without actually pursuing leftist policy.
Hence me calling them pseudo-tankies because it’s hard to label them.
One problem that really does plague leftist organizing is state espionage. It has become almost a running joke that half your local DSA meeting is going to be NYPD and FBI informants fighting for front row seats.
But that’s also more a legacy of Nixon/Reagan Era COINTELPRO, with the modern state security forces scrambling to invent incidents to thwart from whole cloth.
What I see labeled “Tankie” in the modern moment is anyone championing AES. For some reason, the greatest betrayal of any kind of revolution is… winning? So every socialist politician from Fidel Castro to Hugo Soto-Martínez is doing authoritarian stateism by being inside the halls of power, rather than outside waving a paper placard.
I have an easier time getting along with the average online american tankie than with our local communist party’s members
That’s a shame.
I looked it up, and yep, looks like the PCF abandoned Marxism-Leninism in 1979 and adopted Eurocommunism, which is a vulgarization of Marxism that upholds western imperialism. MLs would consider them to be patsocs, same as the American Communist Party which espouses “MAGA Communism.”
The only thing that matters is policy, I’ll work with anyone as long as it’s toward an egalitarian society with wealth redistribution.
Labels are nice for classifying, but not for executing. I don’t care if you identify as leftist, or liberal, or progressive; I care if you support good policies.
hear, hear
I’ll work with anyone as long as it’s toward an egalitarian society with wealth redistribution.
Okay, but here me out? What if we just privatize the mechanism of wealth redistribution? Also we’re going to be spending a bunch of money on foreign wars, but don’t worry - this time the people were fighting are ontologically evil, we promise. Yes, we will have to make deep cuts to social services in order to pay for the war (while still running enormous deficits because haha, psych, deficits don’t matter), but it will be vital to get the Moderate Conservative on board with our program.
Also, we control every branch of government, but we still need to compromise with fascists in the opposition.
Okay, why are you leaving? You’re clearly not serious about progressive reforms.
And STOP SAYING NICE THINGS AND CHINA! This is a red line we will not tolerate!
You know what? You’re not serious. We’re forming a coalition with Liz Cheney. See you in the losers bracket next year.
…
You’re the reason we lost control of the government.
…
Okay, now stop voting for a popular leftist mayor, or we’ll burn this whole party down.
Yeah, but the question ultimately lies in how many bad and straight up harmful policies are worth the small step toward an egalitarian society? Where does it become ignoble to vote for one policy, when there are ultimately many more harmful ones outweighing the positive? Because it’s kinda rare that we get to vote on policy. We vote for people, with the vague promise of policy ideas that face an uphill battle and watering down— not to mention the straight up bastardization of those good policies, turning them into terrible ones.
I wish it were so black and white as us getting to vote on policy. The policymakers surely seem to be unable.
The idea that all “leftists” should just work together is stupid.
Leninism, Anarcho-primitivism and Social democracy (for example) are not different approaches to “leftism” that ultimately want the same things; they are completely separate ideologies that naturally come into conflict. The people who follow them disagree with each other because they want and value completely different things. If they were to put aside their differences there would be nothing left.
That doesn’t mean arguing on the internet about ideology is meaningful, or that there can’t be common goals or enemies, just that you should give up the idea that all “leftists” are somehow natural allies, because it doesn’t make any sense.
Leninism, Anarcho-primitivism and Social democracy (for example) are not different approaches to “leftism” that ultimately want the same things; they are completely separate ideologies that naturally come into conflict.
In a fascist dictatorship, they have a lot more in common than opposition. What’s more, there’s ample room for compromise when members of these caucuses are able to communicate and collaborate freely.
The biggest hurdle to Left Unity I consistently see is Liberal Wreckers stepping in to insist any one ascendant philosophy is unserious and counterproductive, right before they form a coalition with corporationists and fascists.
you should give up the idea that all “leftists” are somehow natural allies
There’s a material basis of alliance that stems from the communities that form the base of each faction.
The idea that a Social Democrat like Lulu or Sheinbaum can’t form coalition with Anarcho-Prim native people in the rural Brazilian/Southern Mexican territories is demonstrably untrue.
The idea that a Leninist like Castro or Mandela couldn’t lead a popular Socialist revolution in Cuba or South Africa is demonstrably untrue.
The idea that Bookchin-style Eco-socialists can’t find allies in Xi’s China or among the Maoist factions of North India is demonstrably untrue.
It takes work and it takes the right historical moment, but not everything has to end like the Spanish Civil War. Left Alliance isn’t some impossible dream.
I believe you are missing the forest for the trees. First, I acknowledge your examples are separate ideologies.
That concept also applies to the right… social conservatives, right-libertarians, and neoliberal ideologies are equally separate. However, those practitioners have no qualms about banding together to suppress dissent (or until such time they are the only voices).
Where the left leaning practitioners are unable to do so, they will be forever tyrannized by the banded majority.
To put it more succinctly, the enemy of my enemy is my friend (when freedom is on the line).
It does help that the overarching theme of the right is centered around taking as much for yourself as possible and not caring about the collateral damage. The right is full of single-issue voters who might, say, not actually explicitly hate gay people but who also don’t give a shit about their rights and safety if it means they can keep their guns. The left, almost definitionally, needs to consider the complexity inherent in not being able to ignore the effects that any given policy might have on others and this means that there is so much more opportunity for conflict.
You’re correct, of course, I’m just pointing out the difference such that it might help attack the issue from a better perspective.
There’s the nuance the original post relies on ignoring. But it’s supposed to be a humorous joke-post anyway.
This. They act like they’re giving up fringe beliefs to keep the consensus more left. It’s isolating and alienating
I don’t care what someone calls themselves as long as they oppose fascism and understand that the only place where Pedophiles are welcome is the inside of a wood chipper.
It’s why ranked choice is the only sane voting approach. First past the post heavily favors right wing authoritarians.
Hell yea I would love to vote for the people I actually want to vote for
“Voting is actually bad” Tankies 🤝 Nazis
whelp, straight to infighting.
“My own entitlement and vindictive emotional state is far more important than broad policy measures to make the best outcomes for the most people.” - Tankies 🤝 Nazis
“I support genocide”
Anti-tankies 🤝 Nazis
" The Holo-incident is not THAT bad" Tankies 🤝 Nazis
Comparing a famine caused by poor harvests across eastern europe and exacerbated by poor management to the fucking holocaust is wild.
Not just wild, also a form of Holocaust denial.
“poor management” is one hell of a way to put it.
Man, tankie really doesn’t mean anything anymore does it?
Yeah, pretty much this.
Going over the comments I already see boat loads of people completely missing the point where right wing extremism is taking hold thanks in part due to the constant bickering.
Good old “divide and conquer”.
The antidote to infighting in my experience is organizing in ideologically diverse spaces. I’ve organized with liberals and all types of different leftists. It has left me with the perspective that all these people are good people that just want better for the world. It’s hard to get angry at them once you know them. Per usual the solution is to touch grass.
Can we smoke weed instead? It’s also green.
The opposite is the case. What worked historically is organizing in an ideologically united platform.
Vanguard parties won revolutions. Ideologically diverse big tent organizations have always eventually broken apart and none has brought a revolution thus far.
And working with liberals has never been a good idea. They’re not a part of the left, they belong to a right wing ideology. That would be like saying we should work together with Nazis, because after all they have socialist in their name.
The antidote to infighting in my experience is organizing in ideologically diverse spaces.
You are saying (correctly) that we need to organize in ways that appeal to more median voters, moderates, liberals and even conservatives around much broader initiatives that appeal to more populist ideas like wealth inequality, social programs to help poor neighborhoods, rebuilding infrastructure and creating more livable communities.
But people who read this are going to translate it as:
“They’re saying I should reach out to the Green/Primitivist Anarchists I banned from my discord server” or “Maybe we should include the Orthodox Marxist–Leninists even though we hate them”
Or even worse: “HOW DARE HE SUGGEST I COMPROMISE WITH MY OPPRESSORS I WILL RIP THROATS OUT”
We all have to live next to each other even if we get the best policy results and I think everyone on either side forgets this. This isn’t centerism, this is understanding that we have to rebuild together even if we don’t share objective realities, we have no choice in the matter. I think too many people get stuck in their algorithmic ideology bubbles and think “the revolution/race war is coming, and everything will be great after.”
Nobody is coming. Nobody is going to make it better. There is no secret cabal or underground movement, there will be no socialist revolution. What we see is what we get and if we want it better, we need to get a LOT better about getting our shitty emotions under control, learning to socialize and using our energy wisely.
Amazing posts! This is the correct approach. 99.9% of people want the same thing salvo’s all the time, it’s tiny issues that divide us and we’ve allowed that divide to grow and grow. People surround themselves with echo chambers and become more and more extreme hating each other and just making things worse.
We have an enemy. We always have. The mega rich. The billionaires, the grifters, those taking advantage of other people. That’s who we need to go after.
Grass is dangerous, specially if you have allergies. My advice is to never touch grass!
LOL as someone with significant autoimmune issues this rings to true.
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The truth about many republicans, is that they want good things for society as well. However they are some of the most gullible, ignorant, uneducated, even miseducated people you will ever care to meet.
It is possible to reach them. But it is one of the most Herculean tasks you will ever undertake. One of the hardest parts of it is to avoid triggering their programming. Starting small with basic concepts you can both agree on. And working from there.
It is possible to reach them. But it is one of the most Herculean tasks you will ever undertake.
If we’re talking about the stereotypical cartoon characters that you see hired by Jubilee to drive up hate and “engagement” then yes, they are real and they are almost impossible to exist around.
But they’re not the majority of people who identify as “conservative” or to be more correct, they don’t tend to identify as anything. The large swath of America’s conservative movement has been just uninformed people who work all day and night and don’t even have time to watch the news and believe earnestly that one out of five people are now trans and they’re trying to shape public policy… because this is the reporting they see on their two hours of downtime they get on Sunday night while scrolling Facebook. These are the tens of millions of people who say “I didn’t know who to vote for, I would have voted for Bernie if he ran, but I picked Trump just to see if he would be better than Harris, at least he’s gonna do something about [problem X].”
If you want to change people and reach hearts and minds, you become better at socializing, you make people like you, then you introduce actual progressive politics to them slowly and gently, starting with class-consciousness. Teach people where their tax money goes first and you will create Marx’s greatest warriors in a week.
I was a conservative, I found my way on my own but I have reached many people, I have turned many people to community consciousness and equality and even equity, because I know what it really looks like, I understand that the stupid unwashed masses just need guideance and they fall so very fast.
Oh God yes Jubilee and that surrounded bs. Though the recent one with Jordan Peterson was somewhat cathartic. Yeah they get some of the most toxic ones.
Yep the majority of them are more like my brother-in-law or my SO. She at least realized back in February the mistake she made. Though I can understand it. As a military daughter who spent her life going from Base to Base as her father moved them around the world. Republican bullshit is sort of ingrained in her family. And she doesn’t actually engage with a lot of the news personally. Instead it gets filtered to her through family.
Brother-in-law came from a privileged bougie family. They own a number of stores in the area. All the fancy tchotchkies as a child. Summers and other regular holidays throughout the year at the lake. Started out from 3rd and thought he made a home run. With a very similar story. Hereditary republicanism. No critical thinking. For One Shining Moment talking about how Democrats and Republicans both suck. On which we could agree. Only to inevitably return back to the Republican talking points. That situation is a whole other shit sandwich unfortunately though.
Just as a tangent, Jubilee and ALL the related content-farmers on Youtube, Tiktok and other social media platforms are radically skewing our own perceptions as well as that of the right. They are the enemy of our better tomorrow.
We’re all getting lost down ideological, algorithmic bubble-worlds but the worlds look so different it’s hard for us to identify that we’re also being manipulated.
This is another area you can find common-ground with the right, and a way to get them to start realizing they’re being played and cucked by corporate elites. (Use that language.)
Absolutely. None of us are immune to propaganda or our own biases.
How do you find common ground when “wanting good things for society” to them means “enslaving all the n****** and killing all the f******”?
It’s shockingly easy to reach people of different political ideology if you view them as humans. Don’t interact with the people who have punisher tattoos and roll coal, but that’s not everyone right of center. Most conservatives are just ill-informed working people with no emotional intelligence or no capacity to care about larger problems than their next utility bill and resent progressive messaging because they’re struggling so hard.
You can break through with class consciousness, almost every conservative I’ve talked to, and turned, started with educating them where their tax money goes, so get educated yourself how the tax code works, what the federal budget actually looks like, what your state’s work laws are and such, and teach them why they can’t afford food AND electricity some months.
You also need to be social and hospitable, do not have the intention of changing people, have the intention of teaching ONE thing and stick to it. This is what Bernie did for decades.
Edit: I will reemphasize for anyone reading down this far, PLEASE STOP TRYING TO CHANGE EVERYTHING. You’re not going to get Bubba and Sheila down in the trailer by the scrapyard to suddenly start promoting trans rights and advocating for a free Tibet. Just let it go, our focus on micro-problems and social issues that don’t impact the majority of people has been a deliberate sabotage of progressive movements to make people turn away. If we can turn people against Republican politics the rest falls in place and we get a better tomorrow, maybe not today but eventually and we have to start planting trees and stop expecting to have all our desires satisfied in our lifetimes.
They think that “those people” must be controlled and enslaved even for their own good. They have been programmed and indoctrinate so deeply they actually believe that those people are the problem. That it wasn’t systems Etc that kept them disadvantaged and down. But somehow something in there very being
Similar to those sneaky manipulative immigrants. Who are on the whole often far more abiding than your average American citizen. Somehow thinking they have forced employers to pay them less and take advantage of them just to hurt law abiding americans. It’s not logical, it’s honestly fucking insane. But a lot of it comes from a similar place. They are hurting too. Much like the rest of us. They just can’t see everyone else. It’s always about them. So the best way to start in on them. Is to point out how the exact same systems have victimized them. And how those they support have enabled and supported it.
Don’t get me wrong there are absolutely many you are shitty people to their core. Whom you shouldn’t bother with. The plenty of them have no concept of class 4 or how much they are being manipulated by Elite bourgeoisie. They just want things to be better. But have no clue about what that would look like or how to go about it. Often times having been completely indoctrinated against it.
But it is one of the most Herculean tasks you will ever undertake.
So follow his lead. Divert a river and float the shit away or make them run in snow until they are tired.
You pretend, for a little while, then slowly introduce truth to them drip by drip. Like an undercover propaganda agent.
Since that’s probably what they’re doing to us.
This strategy is dishonest though. We cannot use all the same methods of the far right and ruling class.
There’s a conflict of interest between wanting people to think critically and then lying to them and only slowly letting them learn parts of a truth. In another example, you can’t have a democracy when all parties try to deceive the voters. That will damage the concept of democracy and the existing supposed democracy.
There is also the danger of falling your own rhetoric and propaganda. Prime example of this is how fascism was created. Mussolini actively engaged in nationalist pro-war propaganda as he thought the continued war would lead to the conditions necessary for socialist revolution. He wasn’t wrong about that as then revolutions broke out in several successors / breakaways of the Russian Empire, in Germany and in Hungary. But eventually he fell to his own propaganda and created fascism.
I’ve seen this type of tactic really well displayed in this video by SquidTips.
This man talked to a fucking Proud Boy wearing a rainbow shirt that said in large letters “GAY” on it with a button that had the hammer and sickle in trans colors, mentioned his partner was trans, and got the guy to agree with him on the fact that he should be focusing on the class war rather than the culture war.
Even Proud Boys and people on the far, far right still think that what they’re doing is good for society. You don’t have to convince them to “stop being evil, switch to being good” you just have to convince them that “this is a more effective method at making society better than what you currently believe is the best.”
Will it work for everyone? Of course not. Some people are just going to be too far gone for you to reach, but there’s a lot more people than you might think that could be swayed, despite what the flood of media coverage of the extremes of society can make you believe.
I’ve found that even if you do this, it doesn’t really alter their behavior. A moment of consensus is never going to be enough.
People need to treat this kind of stuff like breaking someone from a drug addiction or helping someone lose weight. Without addressing the lifestyle factors that drove them down that path, you’ll never get them to actually change.
That’s why the brainwashing is so terrifying. People can fall into it pretty quickly and then it can take years and years to deprogram them.
Fair enough, though I do think this can still help with any broader approach to changing their overall mentality.
A moment of consensus on its own might not be enough to sway someone, but if they hear someone try and contradict what they had recently agreed on, it can then make them feel more cognitive dissonance, and potentially make them at the bare minimum just stop and think for a second.
If someone else is later trying to sway them in some way, it’s going to be easier when that person says something, and they can think “I remember saying something similar” rather than “this is the opposite of what I already believe.”
Plus, there’s also just the sort of “exposure therapy” factor to it, as well. A lot of people are radicalized to believe that the “opposing side” is pure, limitless evil, and that they hate you and want you dead, so just interacting with them can be enough to help slowly deradicalize them.
For example, this Pew Research article states, regarding the likelihood of people to support trans people’s existence:
“Though Republicans who know a trans person are more likely than Republicans who don’t to say gender can be different from sex assigned at birth, more than eight-in-ten in both groups (83% and 88%, respectively) say gender is determined by sex at birth. Meanwhile, there are large differences between Democrats who do and do not know a transgender person. A majority of Democrats who do know a trans person (72%) say someone can be a man or a woman even if that differs from their sex assigned at birth, while those who don’t know anyone who is transgender are about evenly split (48% say gender is determined by sex assigned at birth while 51% say it can be different).”
But of course, that isn’t just limited to acceptance of people by gender. It also applies to race, social and economic status, recipients and non-recipients of welfare programs, people working in different industries, etc.
Again, not saying it’s at all some magic universal way to change someone’s mind, or that on its own it’s necessarily a factor that can override their overarching condition, (hell, that quote from before shows that it had a much smaller impact on republicans than democrats even given the same exposure) but the more and more this happens, the stronger and stronger an effect it has overall, and I’d say that alone makes it worth doing.
True. And I’d expect you’d need fewer of these moments for younger people than older ones. Every little bump might be the one that diverts someone to a different path. I know it hasn’t worked well on my older family members, but it was those kind of moments that helped my diverge from my religious upbringing when I was younger.
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Well that’s why they’re winning, because they have no problem employing spies.
Armed and ready to fight.
This is what happens when hyper-individuality becomes a core of your (western) society. It’s also a byproduct that inadvertently benefits the ruling class. They want division and leftist pockets are already doing it themselves in a lot of cases. Purity tests can fracture communities and needlessly push away potential allies.
It’s why I tend to quote Fred Hampton often. He correctly understood that it was a working class versus ruling class situation and that arguing amongst ourselves was detrimental to organizing. It’s a vertical fight and horizontal attacks waste energy. You can still point out errors in what a comrade says. Criticism, self-criticism, and debate are all components of democratic centralism.
The problem lies when one particular set of “leftists” thinks the best way foward is to have a literal capitalist state with a red flag and execute anyone who could even be a minimal obstacle to that.
The more nuanced communists understand that the past doesn’t have to define the future 1:1, but they also have the uphill battle of people agreeing with everything they say, until they actually mention the word “communism,” thanks to decades of propaganda.
It’s not only decades of propaganda.
Whether you like it or not, but many countries have suffered enourmosly (genocides, extermination of local language and culture) under the banner of regimes that claimed to represent communist ideals and allegedly aimed to develop a communist society.
I was born in the tail end of the USSR, so I honestly don’t really remember it. But from the stories of my parents and relatives, it was trash.
You can’t just dismiss the association between the USSR and attempts at achieving communism.
“claimed” and “allegedly” being the keywords here
I’ve talked to a handful of people that lived through that era in Russia and none of them had positive things to say. They were all working class folks. I trust their judgment over someone on the internet, and I don’t get sucked into team sports identity type shit. We can pick and choose the good ideas and acknowledge the shitty ones.
That’s my point. USSR and the CCP have arguably permanently damaged the communism “brand”.
And you talked to russians, things were even worse for nations occupied by the russians.
It took centuries before any liberal or democratic project managed to produce a society that wasn’t far more brutal than the USSR. Yet you don’t see people going around saying “the French Revolution permanently damaged the Democratic brand!”
Because the French Revolution didnt permanently damage democracy as a political system. And democratic system in one form or another existed for millennia before the French Revolution.
The USSR and China under the CCP permanently discredited (without any chance of rehabilitation) communism as legitimate ideology.
No one in their right mind would want anything to do with communism. It’s like asking for genocide, mass killings, gulags, lack of free expression and poverty. No one is going to do that.
And I not saying this in the polemical sense used by pro-crime/pro-corruption Americans (“this is such a socialist shirhole”).
Trying to decouple the term and core ideas from the past actions is going to be an uphill battle forever. That requires imagination and forward thinking, but you have the folks dunking on it because of the atrocities carried out under it, and the folks on the other side that have managed to embrace those parts so hard that they can no longer sea reason or find nuance.
Yes it is exactly like how antichrists have co-opted the term Christian. For many if it ever was, it will never be clean again in their lifetime unless there’s some massive Purge. They never were Christians and, will never be christians. But as long as they’re allowed to be the face of Christianity it’s only going to hurt it as a whole. At least more than it already hurts itself.
Yes, we need a “brand” that builds upon the ideals (and some of the theory) of communism/Marxism while taking in account both history (e.g. even something as simple as democratic governance being non-negotiable) and the “spirit” and challenges of our times.
Under capitalism you can criticize capitalism. under communism, dissension is met with punishment.
If not death, or being institutionalised.
But you can also get institutionalised or killed under capitalism too if you say the wrong things (China, Russia, the Gulf States).
While you might not be killed in the US, but you can be harassed via lawsuits or deported to a foreign internment camp if you say the wrong things.
I am aware of that. I’m just like… I see a lot of “leftists” that think “successful socialist projects” have to replicate the USSR 100% with everything good and bad about it mixed in. If your definition of “building a better world” is killing or enslaving people for disagreeing with you, you are not a leftist, you’re a nazbol.
And like, the USSR clearly does not exist anymore, and for most of its existence it made a joke out of socialist principles.
We’ve also seen years of what Russia in its current state and Putin are capable of. None of it is good. Hell, when I was more active in activist circles I was in very close proximity to a Russian-driven disinformation campaign in 2016 that used and exploited leftist organizations for its own benefit. It wasn’t some “hey, we’re friends” situation; it was the Kremlin using and disposing of people to destabilize in the same way the US and western powers have for decades themselves. Hitching your wagon to other political powers is a shit idea. There is a reason I don’t trust any politician.
I was in very close proximity to a Russian-driven disinformation campaign in 2016 that used and exploited leftist organizations for its own benefit.
How did you uncover this information?
Articles started popping up and an activist group near me, as well as a couple others across the country, were also involved. A Russian very obviously associated with the Kremlin, was flowing money to these orgs under the guise of a common goal and alignment. Their ultimate goal was to sow chaos during election time and to take votes away from other candidates. It was US-esque tactics on US soil.
I didn’t uncover anything and was merely volunteering with one of the groups when I could, but it was one of those “oh fuck” moments when I saw articles involving the group I was working with.
Articles started popping up
What do you mean “articles”? Articles where? Based on what?
an activist group near me, as well as a couple others across the country, were also involved
Involved in what? How did you determine this?
A Russian very obviously associated with the Kremlin
What do mean “very obviously associated with the Kremlin”? How did you determine this?
Their ultimate goal was to sow chaos during election time and to take votes away from other candidates.
Again, how did you determine this?
it was one of those “oh fuck” moments
What was? What actually was found?
Well… How hard to they want to use that word?
Even more because if everybody is actually agreeing, that means they didn’t wander anywhere outside of the “Social Democracy” boundaries of communism, and don’t need to use the generic label that fascists stole long ago.
I’m anti authoritarian and anti right. Tankies are leftists that I have no interest in getting along with. They are just as excited to be holding the gun in this comic
They would also tell me to my (virtual) face that they think my country has no right to exist, so that too makes it pretty hard to have any sort of productive collaboration.
Yes, leninists are nominally on the left. Nominally. However throughout history most similar ideologies have consistently exterminated executed and oppressed everyone that ever disagreed with them. Allies or not. Left or right. Which makes them authoritarian and untrustworthy first. Left at their convenience.
As an anarchist, I have no major beef with actual communist. While I will disagree a lot with demsoc or socdems. I have no issue allying with them where we agree. Because even though we disagree, on the things we agree on. I know they are just as committed, and won’t turn on us the moment it’s convenient.
But I’m all too familiar with the type that behave like the comic. I think we all are. Anyone using the term shitlib or blue maga for instance.
As an anarchist
You aren’t an anarchist though, you’ve never actually expressed anarchists beliefs: you’re a hard core DNC supporter and liberal. There’s a reason your main complaint is people using terms like “shitlib” and “bluemaga”, because those are what you are.
I do it all the time. Done it several places in this thread even. Though lying and dishonesty from a joke like you. Who’s shitty hot takes are regularly posted on and laughed at in many communities. That’s completely on brand.
For every weak and tepid bit of support I’ve ever given the DNC during the presidential election. I could give you 10 to 13 calling them out. Because I do it all the time. However terminally online little trolls like yourself aren’t interested in facts or reality. And your disapproval is a badge of honor.
I do it all the time.
I literally never see it, but I do often see you saying things that are explicitly incompatible with anarchism.
Who’s shitty hot takes are regularly posted on and laughed at in many communities
“We make fun of you in our secret tree house that you aren’t allowed in” is not the sick burn you think.
I could give you 10 to 13 calling them out.
And for every one tepid, qualified criticism of the democrats you offer, I could you give 20 of you viciously tearing into the left for not supporting the democrats enough.
However terminally online little trolls like yourself aren’t interested in facts or reality. And your disapproval is a badge of honor.
Oh my god, go back to Reddit you insufferable dweeb. You’re really doing the “facts and logic” bullshit?
Exactly, all authoritarians (far left/far right) can suck a big fat one. They are always the best boot lickers.
Yes, Unity cannot be enforced. Unity can only coexist with consent. And those that would violate consent to enforce Unity actually despise both.
This person has previously advocated for hanging people for treason.
This “anti-authoritarian” recently called for mass execution of their enemies.
Me? Is this because I said the SS should have been executed?
Are you now going to argue that that isn’t an authoritarian act because it was justified? Because, guess what, every “authoritarian” believes their actions are justified
Protecting Jewish and other minorities rights to live and safety is not an authoritarian act. It is in fact protecting the most vulnerable’s liberty. Anti authorization is not lawless. You are a very weird little person and I have no interest in trying to convince you Nazis are bad. I hope you can figure that one out on your own
I believe what @BrainInABox@lemmy.ml is getting at is that all states are authoritarian, and that there are positive and negative uses of authority. Executing SS officers is a positive use of authority. Since all states are an extension of the ruling class, it is better for that ruling class to be the proletariat, rather than the bourgeoisie, and for the proletariat to use its authority to oppress the bourgeoisie and gradually sublimate capital until all production is collectivized, class ceases to exist, and by extension the state withers away, leaving only administration, management, etc.
No I’m pretty sure they pulled something from another post to try to misrepresent it because they’re a bitter terminally online loser. That is a very generous interpretation though
I’m saying it because I’ve seen them make the same argument, as I have done myself, in different ways.
This is an odd take just considering World War 2 is like the example of unity against a common genocidal threat: the Nazis.
Yeah and that only happened after years of the Nazi party being in power in Germany. And they even got Sudetenland as appeasement by France and Britain without the consent of Czechoslovakia. France and Britain only gave a fuck after Poland was invaded while the rest of Europe tried to stay neutral. And later Italy joined the Nazi. Europe wasn’t very united against the Nazi. Unity of the allies only happened after hundreds of thousands civilians were already executed. Before the invasion of Poland the Nazi executed political opponents and rounded up the Jews in Germany and the world didn’t do shit about it.
There were no anarchists left in the USSR.
The Soviet Union was established before the Nazis existed. There was no need to ally with anarchists against them when they didn’t exist yet and waged war.
A better example would be the Spanish civil war where communists, liberals and anarchists did fight on the same side until infighting broke out due to an ineffective and non-authorative government. Meaning they failed to establish a leading ideology which could have prevented this.
And the Soviets allied with Nazi Germany and carved up Poland with their new buddies.
The communists were never “buddies” with the Nazis. The communists spent the decade prior trying to form an anti-Nazi coalition force, such as the Anglo-French-Soviet Alliance which was pitched by the communists and rejected by the British and French. The communists hated the Nazis from the beginning, as the Nazi party rose to prominence by killing communists and labor organizers, cemented bourgeois rule, and was violently racist and imperialist, while the communists opposed all of that.
When the many talks of alliances with the west all fell short, the Soviets reluctantly agreed to sign a non-agression pact, in order to delay the coming war that everyone knew was happening soon. Throughout the last decade, Britain, France, and other western countries had formed pacts with Nazi Germany, such as the Four-Power Pact, the German-French-Non-Agression Pact, and more. Molotov-Ribbentrop was unique among the non-agression pacts with Nazi Germany in that it was right on the eve of war, and was the first between the USSR and Nazi Germany. It was a last resort, when the west was content from the beginning with working alongside Hitler.
Harry Truman, in 1941 in front of the Senate, stated:
If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.
Not only that, but it was the Soviet Union that was responsible for 4/5ths of total Nazi deaths, and winning the war against the Nazis.
Not gonna mention the Secret Protocol in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that enabled the partition of Poland and the Baltics?
Or that Stalin actually fell for it all, trusted Hitler, disregarded all evidence of Nazi troop buildup until the day of Operation Barbarossa? Then Stalin spent weeks disappeared from public view.
Credit to the Soviets for defeating the Nazis. WW2 would have been lost without them. But they also acted as imperialists in reattaching Tsarist colonies to Russia, dividing Poland and the Baltics with Hitler, invading Finland, not to mention all the puppet states created postwar.
No, because there was never an agreement about partitioning. It was about spheres of influence, which Nazi Germany broke, and further the USSR entered Poland weeks after the Nazis invaded in order to prevent the entirety of Poland from falling to the Nazis, largely sticking to areas only a few decades prior Poland had invaded and annexed.
There’s also no evidence the Soviets didn’t expect the Nazis to invade. They didn’t get the timeframe right, but they expected it the entire time. And no, the Soviets weren’t imperialist.
3·6 hours agoIt’s interesting to read that article on sci-hub. It’s giving more specific details on what happened in 1939, but is otherwise in line with The Cold War & Its Origins. You don’t need access to classified documents to understand the world, you can sit there in 1961 and get shit more or less right.
Yep! Just having a fairly consistent and coherent understanding of the world is usually sufficient to get things more right than not, not everyone needs to be a grandmaster-level Marxist-Leninist with decades of reading and practice to view the world in a constructive way. Theory and practice is still necessary, but even liberals can acknowledge reality.
Yeah that’s why they’re stupid. I think it’s more of an astroturf op
I think the premise here is flawed. It assumes infighting is the reason why we can’t coalesce around a single candidate but the real reason why that isn’t happening is because the DNC keeps backing right wing candidates who don’t represent any of us. Too many people are under the false belief that being a Democratic politician makes one the “good guy” in the face of “evil Republicans” when in reality we’ve just been given two Republican candidates to choose from at the ballot box for quite some time now. They all work for the same masters and don’t give a shit about fixing this broken country. They aren’t two different sides, they’re all on the same side against the American people.
It assumes infighting is the reason why we can’t coalesce around a single candidate but the real reason why that isn’t happening is because the DNC keeps backing right wing candidates who don’t represent any of us.
That wouldn’t really matter if we coalesced behind the candidates we want in the primary.
Except when the DNC doesn’t like that candidate so they put their thumb on the scale to ensure they don’t win. Why else do you think we keep getting the same handful of candidates? Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, Obama, Clinton, Biden, Biden, Harris. Do you not see the pattern here? They want a dynasty in control not the people with the best ideas.
A thumb on the scale wouldn’t really matter if we were united. They put their thumb on the scale with Mamdani and he won anyway.
Why else do you think we keep getting the same handful of candidates?
Because primary turnout is something like 15% of eligible voters, who are disproportionately old and “centrist”.
Do you not see the pattern here? They want a dynasty in control not the people with the best ideas.
I’m not saying that this is false, I’m just saying it wouldn’t matter if we quit the infighting, rallied behind a good prospect, and actually showed up to vote for them as the Democratic candidate.
They put their thumb on the scale with Mamdani and he won anyway.
He won a primary but has yet to win the election. This is the same party that also produced Trump supporter Adams and sleazebag Cuomo. The same party that just ousted recently elected party leaders for wanting to primary candidates like Adams and Cuomo with candidates like Mamdani. They’ve demonstrated time and time again that they’d rather have someone like Trump win than allow someone like Mamdani to take office and that’s what he’ll be facing in the general election.
Because primary turnout is something like 15% of eligible voters, who are disproportionately old and “centrist”.
Because people have been beaten down with the same club for so long that they’ve given up. I can say with almost certainty that a majority of people these days are just voting against the other candidate rather than voting for someone, so how do you build a coalition of people behind someone in an environment like that? You don’t.
I’m just saying it wouldn’t matter if we quit the infighting, rallied behind a good prospect, and actually showed up to vote for them as the Democratic candidate.
I completely agree that’s possible in theory but then it brings us back to square one where the DNC won’t give them any support, puts out attack ads about how they’re “too radical,” excludes them from debates, and corporate media gives them no coverage. You’re asking for a machine to produce a product that isn’t wanted by the people actually running the machine.
People here and on Reddit will tell you election after election that it’s on you to compromise and meet these right-wing Democrats where they stand. That “now is not the right time,” that you should “vote blue no matter who,” that “everything is on the line this time” as these very same candidates lose election after election. If you argue with them you’re just met with a bunch of thought-terminating cliches like “bOtH SiDeS” or “Russian plant” and treated as a scapegoat for not compromising to their disgusting and ineffective values, meanwhile they act like said loser candidate was “the best option” in hindsight despite the fact that they lost yet again.
At this point I’d be perfectly happy to throw the Democratic party in the incinerator alongside the Republican party and just starting over from scratch. They only exist at this point to act as controlled opposition and kayfabe to give the appearance of two opposing sides.
He won a primary but has yet to win the election.
My whole point was about primaries, but even still he’s polling well in the lead. If he wins will you admit that it can be done?
Because people have been beaten down with the same club for so long that they’ve given up. I can say with almost certainty that a majority of people these days are just voting against the other candidate rather than voting for someone, so how do you build a coalition of people behind someone in an environment like that?
Okay, what’s your point? That the same population that’s too apathetic to vote in a primary are going to what, pick up arms and take to the streets? Organize behind and promote a minority party? How do you plan to build a coalition behind an objectively more difficult and unlikely strategy? You don’t.
You’re asking for a machine to produce a product that isn’t wanted by the people actually running the machine.
Mamdani, and several other leftist candidates have been running exceptionally successful grassroots campaigns through social media and hitting the streets. We live in the information age, viral community-driven campaigns have the potential to reach more people than legacy media. And again, what alternative do you propose that will face less corporate opposition? You think the DNC is going to stay silent on third party candidates competing for their votes? You think corporate media is going to stay silent on any attempt at actual revolution? If the machine is so powerful, what action are you suggesting that can actually overcome it?
they act like said loser candidate was “the best option” in hindsight despite the fact that they lost yet again.
So long as elections in this country are FPTP, and leftists don’t show up to primaries, and Republicans keep pushing Christo-fascism, then they are correct that it is the best option. Splitting the anti-Republican vote just helps the Republicans, and by extension the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society. Personally, I’d rather have a Neo-Liberal government than a Christian Nationalist one, and there aren’t any other options right now.
At this point I’d be perfectly happy to throw the Democratic party in the incinerator alongside the Republican party and just starting over from scratch.
No disagreement here, but where’s the incinerator and the power to throw them in it? If I had a magic wand that I could wave to erase both parties, I would. But I don’t have that kind of magic wand, and neither do you. We have to operate in the environment we actually exist in. Idealism doesn’t get us any closer to material change. Voting against the worst option is the best choice we have at the polls, until we can get seriously organized. Serious organization takes a lot of time and effort. Ignoring the material present for a vague idealist future is a massive strategic blunder.
It’s a lot harder to organize as a political prisoner in a concentration camp.
My whole point was about primaries, but even still he’s polling well in the lead. If he wins will you admit that it can be done?
Winning a primary doesn’t mean much if the party crushes you in the general. I hope he wins and I would be happy to admit I was wrong if he makes it and actually lives up to his word once in office.
Okay, what’s your point? That the same population that’s too apathetic to vote in a primary are going to what, pick up arms and take to the streets? Organize behind and promote a minority party? How do you plan to build a coalition behind an objectively more difficult and unlikely strategy? You don’t.
Mamdani, and several other leftist candidates have been running exceptionally successful grassroots campaigns through social media and hitting the streets. We live in the information age, viral community-driven campaigns have the potential to reach more people than legacy media. And again, what alternative do you propose that will face less corporate opposition? You think the DNC is going to stay silent on third party candidates competing for their votes? You think corporate media is going to stay silent on any attempt at actual revolution? If the machine is so powerful, what action are you suggesting that can actually overcome it?
My point is that you’re advocating for people to try and fix the system from within the broken system itself. Democratic and Republican primaries are completely controlled by these two private organizations not some overarching organization, people, or law. It’s naive to think that you can somehow outplay the DNC (or RNC) leadership at a game they crafted and rigged themselves. It’s like thinking you can outplay the house at a casino if you just use the right strategy. Even if you do somehow find a winning strategy, they’ll just refuse to pay you, take you into the backroom, beat your ass, and then have police come haul you out for trespassing because the house always wins. You won’t get better candidates by picking from the handful of predetermined candidates that the DNC offers you in their primary race whether 15% vote or 100% vote.
I don’t know what the ‘correct’ approach is but I know it isn’t this. Perhaps some actual grassroots organizations can put something together or an existing third party can take their placr, but regardless of what it is, it’s not going to be something internal to these organizations, it has to come from the outside.
No I dont think the DNC or corporate media will ignore these events, they’ll come out swinging like they did in 2008 with the Occupy Wall Street protests. They’ll paint these outsiders as kooks and extremists and make them look like a joke on TV and the internet. You speak about the information age as if everyone is somehow more enlightened than generations past, yet we see people as a whole getting dumber and less informed as time goes on. We see the powerful using social media to spread a bunch of lies and disinformation. We see the truth being cast aside or drowned in a bunch of noise.
So long as elections in this country are FPTP, and leftists don’t show up to primaries, and Republicans keep pushing Christo-fascism, then they are correct that it is the best option.
How are these people “the best option” in hindsight when we know for a fact that they lost the election? I find statements like this so utterly insane. You’re referring to the very people that we unquestionably know weren’t the best option by virtue of them losing these elections to a buffoon. This party of “the best options” were so ‘good’ that the Republicans control the entire government now.
Splitting the anti-Republican vote just helps the Republicans, and by extension the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society. Personally, I’d rather have a Neo-Liberal government than a Christian Nationalist one, and there aren’t any other options right now.
This is just the “vote blue no matter who” mentality i previously referred to phrased another way. Neo-Liberal governments have driven us to this point alongside the Christian Nationalists. They’re both responsible for this and they’re the ones determining the options we have. I legitimately cannot understand how someone like yourself can agree that we have terrible options while simultaneously arguing that we need to support the people determining said options. It’d be like going to a grocery store filled with rancid food and telling yourself that you need to choose something off the shelf because that particular store left you no other options. Why would you do that? Why reward that store with your hard earned money? It’s such incredibly closed-minded behavior that harms your own self interests and not only are you advocating that you should shop there personally, but everyone else should too.
No disagreement here, but where’s the incinerator and the power to throw them in it? If I had a magic wand that I could wave to erase both parties, I would. But I don’t have that kind of magic wand, and neither do you. We have to operate in the environment we actually exist in. Idealism doesn’t get us any closer to material change. Voting against the worst option is the best choice we have at the polls, until we can get seriously organized. Serious organization takes a lot of time and effort. Ignoring the material present for a vague idealist future is a massive strategic blunder.
The incinerator is your vote and what you decide to do with it. The environment we exist in isn’t limited to these two private parties. That’s just what they want you to believe. Sacrificing your ideals just to be disappointed and have things get worse because neo-liberals don’t serve the American people isnt going to bring material change either. Doing the same thing every election isnt going to bring about change. Constantly “voting against the worst option” just means the next worse option can safely ignore you and refuse to improve things because they have you convinced that they’re your only choice and therefore have no accountability to anyone. I’d argue that someone in your position is “ignoring the material present for some vague idealistic future.” You think if the Dems can just win this next election they’ll turn things around and eventually the Republicans will scurry off somewhere, but we’ve seen numerous times that even with a Democratic supermajority, they have no interest in fixing things and Republicans aren’t going anywhere because they’re doing the exact same thing to their base.
It’s a lot harder to organize as a political prisoner in a concentration camp.
And regardless of which party wins any given election, we’ve been steadily approaching that reality with each passing day. Seems like a great wakeup call that some actual change is needed, no?
Winning a primary doesn’t mean much if the party crushes you in the general.
He’s beating every other candidate combined in the polls.
Democratic and Republican primaries are completely controlled by these two private organizations not some house always wins.*
Then what winning strategy do you recommend, and can it be implemented before midterms?
I don’t know what the ‘correct’ approach is
This is the crux of it. I’m advocating imperfect but immediately implementable actions, and you’re fighting that to remain pure for “Perhaps some actual grassroots organizations” doing something at some point in the future.
You can do both. A bandage doesn’t heal a wound, but it keeps you from bleeding out long enough to get to the hospital. We’re a long long way from the hospital, and you’re refusing first aid.
We see the truth being cast aside or drowned in a bunch of noise.
And you see truth coming out and spreading like wildfire. Social media is a tool. You can leverage it with money, or you can leverage it with numbers. We’ve got them beat on the numbers.
How are these people “the best option” in hindsight when we know for a fact that they lost the election?
Because the options are Democrat, Republican, or third party. A perfect third party with no chance of success is a bad option. Policy doesn’t mean anything if you stand no chance of winning. So it’s really a binary choice, and whichever one is less bad is by definition the best.
I legitimately cannot understand how someone like yourself can agree that we have terrible options while simultaneously arguing that we need to support the people determining said options.
Because we’re bleeding out. A dirty t-shirt as a makeshift tourniquet is a terrible medical option, but it sure as hell beats bleeding out. Stop focusing on historical-scale problems, since the ones in front of you RIGHT NOW. The best hospital in the world is useless to you if you bleed out before it’s built.
The incinerator is your vote and what you decide to do with it.
And when you’re a smattering of third party voters, that “incinerator” is a matchbook.
The environment we exist in isn’t limited to these two private parties. That’s just what they want you to believe.
Functionally it is. That’s what the math proves. This has been extensively studied. Parties can change, but as long as the mechanics of the election stay the same, it will always be a choice between the two biggest parties.
You think if the Dems can just win this next election they’ll turn things around
I do not. I think that building a grassroots coalition takes years, even decades. I think that the Republicans are an immediate existential threat to that kind of coalition, and do-nothing Democrats aren’t. I think it’s a lot easier to plan a revolution when your vanguard hasn’t been abducted by the gestapo.
And regardless of which party wins any given election, we’ve been steadily approaching that reality with each passing day.
What? No we haven’t. We approached that reality like a rocket after inauguration day. This is a dramatic, breakneck acceleration, directly tied to one party. It’s ridiculous to suggest otherwise. This is not a serious statement, I can’t have a discussion with someone that divorced from reality.
Seems like a great wakeup call that some actual change is needed, no?
Yeah, just like the last couple dozen wakeup calls over the last century. Until you’ve got the army to back up your plans, maybe let people address immediate threats in peace, and help them out while you build the resources and influence to IMPLEMENT your big plan. You’re no different than the worker voting red because when they’re a billionaire they’ll want tax cuts for their private jet.
It’s a tunnel they get into. Fascism is bad but the DNC is worse.
I complain about the DNC all the time, follow local races, and donate to them. But some segments of the world can’t even imagine national party politics not being the source of all evil.
Except when the DNC doesn’t like that candidate so they put their thumb on the scale to ensure they don’t win.
Knew it was going here. There’s always a reason we’re going to not vote this time. Thumb on the scale, billions in blood money, seekrit laws prohibiting democracy.
We have one year before the midterms.
Lefties, commies, demsoc/socdem, anarchists, shitlibs, groaties, tankies, whatever the fuck — Get.Yourshit.Together. If you can’t bring yourself to vote for the DNC, and you can’t get anything else going, you’re wasting your own time and sinking the rest of us.
You knew it was going there because the Democratic party refuses to listen to reason and continues to drift further and further rightto the point that we just had two candidates promoting genocide, attacking immigrants, attacking the poor, and palling around with Dick Cheney. It’s funny that you’d rather attack the critics than dare speak out against the actual perpetrators of this abhorrent behavior. Attack the victim not the victimizer.
Democratic sycophants are becoming almost indistinguishable from their MAGA counterparts these days. You guys are all using the exact same language.
Get.Yourshit.Together. If you can’t bring yourself to vote for the DNC, and you can’t get anything else going, you’re wasting your own time and sinking the rest of us.
And what will you be doing in the meantime other than attacking those who actually want things to improve?
And what will you be doing in the meantime other than attacking those who actually want things to improve?
What like accusing them of being soulless wholly-owned corporate shitlibs who are token opposition with their money-stained fingers on the scales, gladly supporting genocide, being the same as literal nazi fascists, and kicking down all the good-hearted people who want things to improve?
I mean . . . I could. But that just wouldn’t be very productive would it.
I’m not from the USA and I’m tired of US politics 🥺
The current rise of the far right in my country started two decades ago, in part because of leftist infighting. I’m not going to point any fingers, I was guilty of infighting on that day too. It was so unexpected, nobody thought the far right could beat any of the leftist candidates… many lessons were learned that day.
It was widely expected that Chirac and Lionel Jospin, the outgoing cohabitation Prime Minister and nominee of the Socialist Party, would be the most popular candidates in the first round, thus going on to face each other in the runoff, with opinion polls showing a hypothetical Chirac versus Jospin second round too close to call. However, Jospin unexpectedly finished in third place behind Le Pen. Journalists and politicians claimed polls had failed to predict Le Pen’s second-place finish in the general election, though his strong stance could be seen in the week prior to the election.[citation needed] This led to serious discussions about polling techniques, the climate of French politics and especially the high numbers of candidates from the left-wing.
Although Le Pen’s political party, the National Front, described itself as mainstream conservative, observers largely agreed in defining it as a far-right and nationalist party. As a protest, almost all French political parties called for their supporters to vote against Le Pen, most notably the Socialists, who were traditionally billed as the archrivals to Chirac’s party. Chirac thus went on to win in the largest landslide in a presidential election in French history (greater even than that of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in 1848, the first by direct ballot), winning over 82% of the vote.
That sure sounds like a carbon copy of US politics (or vice versa). You have politicians and journalists spinning a story about how things will turn out, and when they dont turn out that way the leftist candidates move to the right to find ‘solidarity’ just before the right sweeps the entire government.
