The issue on here, on Lemmy, where we're speaking, is that many leftists don't care to make a strong distinction between 'flawed liberal moderates' and literal fascists. A constant refrain on here is the idea that things have been getting worse since, apparently, the inception of liberalism itself, and steadily spiraling towards fascism, so what does it matter if fascism happens today or twenty years from now? Electing non-fascists just puts off the inevitable. And, for reasons both personal and philosophical, I find that an immensely repugnant way of thinking, not to mention strategically and historically unsound. "Trump is worse than Harris - so what?" Fucking people suffer because of it, millions, including many whose lives will be ruined or ended, and for no gain to marginalized folk anywhere.
I came back from a family reunion discussing the very real threat of ICE against my relatives. I spent the past week struggling with my health insurance over recent policy changes (a dive I'll have to take again soon, since nothing was resolved, for better or worse - gotta love the run-around). I've had half-a-decade of mental health progress unraveled by six months of this administration, and all while I watch foreign affairs get worse and worse under the influence of the wannabe fascists who were elected. And then I come on here to blow off steam, and I find many people who claim to be leftists and who so 'boldly' stood against the anti-fascist coalition candidate in the name of 'solidarity' proceeding to express no solidarity with anyone who's suffering or going to suffer under this regime, either under the banner of "Things will get so bad that they'll HAVE to get better" (accelerationism) or "They're Americans mostly, so they deserve it anyway" (some weird form of campism).
I'm further left than 95% of Americans. I'm further left than 95% of Democrats. But because I have the audacity of regarding harm reduction as mandatory and not optional - a position which I take on abstract policy, but which is also strengthened by my own uncertain future under this fucking regime - I'm a turbolib, a shitlib, a moderate, a conservative, a fascist, a genocide supporter, and a Zionist.
Lemmy is the fringe, and while I definitely point to issues like Leftists choosing to abstain and let the greater evil win, I do so not because that's the biggest problem in society in general (in the broader situation, leftists could've saved us in 2024 - but so could a dozen other fucking groups that screwed the pooch in 2024, the DNC et co highest on that list second only to the actual, literal fascists), but because it's a problem that, on here, still meets with a resistance to acknowledge that it was a bad fucking move that millions of marginalized people are going to pay the price for - only a few of whom are those who fucking sat out and let fascism win in this country.
I find celebrations of that repugnant, and, for that matter, exhausting.
Aren't current affairs and the potential of being told to fuck off and die on my kitchen floor of a chronic disease exhausting enough without having to add people on my nominal left cheering the whole fucked situation on, because they bizarrely imagine the oppression of marginalized individuals as some kind of blow against the oppressors?
Fuck me. Guess this is really just a rant.
There's a difference, in my view, between good faith criticism of Democrats that's rooted in reality - which is necessary and for fucks sake should have been listened to last year ... ...and hyperbolic performances of ideological purity for in-group approval - which social media has made far more common and popular.
The former might recognize the complexities of political coalitions, the American electorate, and public policy while offering prescriptive recommendations on how Democrats should advance - and win with - left-wing policies.
The latter is steeped in black-and-white absolutism, hyperbole, no true scotsman bullshit, fantastical thinking, and whatever this month's overused leftwing meme phrase is ("HAND IN GLOVE!"). There's usually zero depth there because it's a worldview shaped by soundbites on social media, not nuanced reality. It's nice to believe that there's a magical dormant socialist majority just waiting to be activated in the United States but no, there isn't. We have to build it first.
Mamdani succeeded because he had the energy of the former, not the latter. He spoke directly to peoples' issues, went out into the community to build bridges, and so far he's seemed flexible about the specifics of his policy proposals - like, he cares more about moving things towards a more equitable, just, left-wing outcome than making sure what he does is the purest socialist magic this side of Karl Marx, popularity and effectiveness be damned. He's building an actual broad fucking coalition of support, an exercise that necessarily requires dialogue, compromise, realism, etc. That shit functions much better in the real world than ideological absolutism. Even Lenin himself had to adapt the NEP, after all.
Building a somewhat large coalition must precede durable political or systemic change. Either that or you enforce it at the barrel of the gun and, uh, fuck that.
We'll see if other Dems try to throw sand in Mamdani's gears or not; they seemed like they were going to at first but now they seem like they're scared off by his genuine popularity (which they all wish they could emulate). Let's hope he can keep his plot armor here - and that he SUCCEEDS as mayor. If he ends up more popular than other Democrats and his left policies are successful we'll see more new young faces following his lead in other places.
I joined this community because I want to read and participate in more discussions with - and build coalitions with - more of the former, the Mamdani's. I'm fucking tired of the vocal idiots demanding space communism TODAY while refusing to engage with reality and the steps necessary to get from here to there. That bullshit is getting us further from a left-wing populace & world and it needs to be shot into the sun.