So one of the few reasons I still occasionally go on reddit is because I have a weird fascination with right-wing conspiracy theorists, their incredible levels of confirmation bias and confused way of thinking. That kind of community just doesn't exist on lemmy (not complaining).
One thing I have noticed in the past couple of years is that not only do they seem to become more popular, the community also seems to simultaneously move further right and, in some confused ways, more to the left.
They simultaneously think immigrants and the LGBT community is to blame for everything while thinking that it's WEF that is secretly planning everything.
To name one example, there was a post today that was incredibly bigoted not just against LGBT people (which is pretty accepted in those circles obviously), but also criticizes "race mixing", which is quite extreme even for those circles (it has since been removed due to breach of reddit ToS)..
At the same time, some people in the comments seem to be so close (yet so far) to becoming full blown socialists. For example, here is one comment:
"I often wonder what's stopping us from taking what they have? As far as I can see, laws are the only thing protecting them. If they aren't following the laws than we shouldn't either. For example what would Bezos do if employees decided they wanted to take control of his warehouses simultaneously? There is nothing he could do. There isn't even available law enforcement to tackle a scenario like that."
And yes, I checked, this is a full blown right-winger who thinks illegal immigration is ruining America, not some kind of undercover leftist, as far as I can tell.
So what do you make of this stuff? Does it say something when even the confused fringe right essentially flirts with the idea of a "socialist uprising"? Or is it just classic far-right populism/fascism using leftist talking points to divide the working class? Does this mean that there could potentially be some kind of hope that those people reach some kind of class consciousness or are they just too lost and confused?
As an European, I have never understood why so many American leftists don't see that, even by simply listening to what he is saying or looking at what he is doing. I mean he literally has a picture of Eugene Debs on his desk and mentions how he is this political role model and hero any chance he gets, that alone should tell you where he stands on an ideological or philosophical level..
And of course, he has been involved in various socialist groups his whole life and literally still calls himself a democratic socialist. Why would he do that if it wasn't true? To gain a political advantage, in America of all places, where calling yourself a socialist would have generally been political suicide?
And then are his policies, where many will focus on healthcare and say "he just wants healthcare" and ignore anything else. But of course, healthcare is a major issue because it makes the working class even more dependend on their employers because they lose tgeir healthcare if they get fired, so it makes sense for him to focus on tgat first. And of course, he also had other policy in his program, like transfering 20% of ownership over major corporations to their employees and having workers electing half of the board of directors.
You can call him a reformer, you can call his participation ineffective, but why deny his political believes?