OBJECTION!

If you define everyone you feel like doing violence towards as “an other church” then sure, but then the distinction is completely meaningless. Plenty of the examples I mentioned such as the inquisitions were used against people who were longtime, faithful members of the church. No one was safe.

To be historically accurate, the catholic church only liked to kill its popes and other churches.

What the fuck is this shit. The church conducted brutal campaigns of terror hunting down religious minorities or those accused of heresy and tortured them to extract confessions which they then used to justify more torture. Jews were frequently criminalized and forced out of countries in mass deportations at their own expense. And then there were, oh yeah, the Crusades military campaigns that brought death and destruction even to their own lands as crusaders looted and pillaged wherever they went, in one case even sacking Constantinople who they were supposed to be protecting.

Like yeah I guess “Believe everything we say and defer to our authority and we probably won’t kill you” is technically better than just killing people, but that’s not exactly a high bar.

I have not but I may look into it

During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.

Yeah good luck walking around telling the average American that isn’t already a leftist “yeah come join me, I’m a socialist communist!”

Do you… not see what the right would… do with that?

Whereas if I just say, “Yeah come join me, I’m a socialist” the right will just call me a communist anyway. I’d rather own it and wear it with pride than allow it to be used as a boogeyman. The way I see it, reclaiming the term means I have a better chance to define it, if the right says, “Communists believe this,” I can say, “I’m a communist and none of us believe that shit, this is what we’re actually about.” Whereas if I let it be a boogeyman then I’m stuck giving them ground and punching left, “I’m a leftist, but I’m not like those dirty commies.” They’re still gonna hate my fucking guts for being a leftist and in the process I’ve alienated potential allies and given in to their rhetoric.

It’s no different from reclaiming other insults, except it wasn’t originally an insult and we shouldn’t allow it to be.

Not only are you butchering the reality and history of these terms

Please define them and explain how they’re different, because again, I genuinely don’t know how you’re using them. The way they’re commonly used varies tremendously and generally leaves a lot of ambiguity, I’m guessing the difference is that communism has a harsher vibe or something.

Socialism as a system is a transitionary state that aims to establish communism, that is, a classless, moneyless, stateless society. A socialist is someone who aims to establish communism through such a transitionary state. I guess you could distinguish socialists from anarcho-communists, who seek to go straight to communism without a transitionary period. There is also a distinction between Marxists and Social Democrats, but Social Democrats, at least originally (Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein, etc), still claimed that their end goal was communism, and that they could achieve that through reforming existing systems. And on the other side of that, the USSR was called the USSR and not the USCR, because it did not claim to have achieved communism but rather to be a transitionary state towards that eventual goal.

You ignored the question… and continued to make attacks that have no actual end result/point to the convo you claim to be trying to have.

What question did I ignore, exactly? And what convo do I “claim to be trying to have?”

Again. Re read #3 because I’ve already said it multiple times. Do you have any actual other point than that besides “dems & Cheney bad?” That’s what I’ve been trying to get to.

I mean, if you want to get into a more general discussion of why the democrats lost, we can do that - the main reason being that they were associated with a declining status quo. I talked about the Cheney’s because that was the specific topic being discussed.

I don’t really get why you seem to be taking my points so personally.

I mean… you have to go beyond socialism into communism to not think that some form of capitalism should exist. And I’m not saying I’m not on board with SOME of that, but you’re kind of driving my point home that you’re just… saying shit.

I’m a basically a fuckin’ socialist you turd.

I don’t understand how you’re using any of these terms. To me, “communist” and “socialist” are pretty much interchangable in the same way that “liberalism” and “capitalism” are.

this whole time when I’ve addressed the Cheney point MULTIPLE times, which was your only real complaint until you kept attacking random shit.

See, I don’t have any understanding of why you think my criticism of the Cheney’s or the Democratic Party was an attack on you that you had to defend against.

The influence of “bots” is highly overstated and is basically just a way of dismissing legitimate criticism

Ah, bootlicker/propaganda bot it is.

Well, that didn’t take long 🙄

Every statement you’ve made has been in bad faith, purely attempting to derail the argument and make readers glaze their eyes over.

I love when people just say shit. Like, you haven’t pointed to any actual reason why anything I’ve said is “bad faith” or “emotional.” Really just rolling out all the go-to methods of categorically dismissing any and all criticism, huh?

Fox News is watched by 60% of the country

Lmao no it isn’t. You got a source for that number?

No, the NEOliberal status quo. We have never been a leftist nation. Our Overton window is very far to the right. Bernie is like a single step to the left of the center. Check out any other major democracy.

Yeah, no shit? Why are you telling me this as if I don’t already know?

Attacking "liberal"ism is straight kremlin propaganda.

Lmao. A liberal is a supporter of capitalism, as a socialist, of course I’m opposed to liberalism. I guess every socialist in the world is a “Kremlin propagandist” in your view.

Why do you think the right-wing, free market “Liberal Democrats” of the UK are called that?

Did you not read that I opened with I hate Cheney?

I never claimed otherwise? Very confusing reaction.

If you stopped responding emotionally

Excuse me? In what way was my response “emotional?”

or with the intent to derail and attack

By now the inaccuracy of your attacks

What “attacks” are you talking about? All I did was disagree with you on certain points.

Propaganda has influenced EVERY democracy.

They’ve got propaganda, we’ve got propaganda, everybody’s got propaganda, and always has. The Democratic party has plenty of money to get their message out, the problem is their message sucked and didn’t resonate.

MAGA/US, Brexit/UK, Marine La Pen/France, Bolsonaro/Brazil, AfD/Germany, Polliviere/Canada… the list goes on.

All of those were driven by material conditions, yes propaganda had an effect but the reason the propaganda resonates and has influence is because of people being dissatisfied with the liberal status quo.

gaza will be torn apart and sold to the highest bidders

Sorry, now that’s going to happen? What the hell did you think was happening before?

I think you should welcome (almost) anyone against an enemy like Trump.

I would much rather have the people who hate the Cheney’s guts in my coalition than have the Cheney’s. How many people do they even represent? Who doesn’t hate them, and with good reason?

But not voting for Kamala because the coalition allowed Liz Cheney in is probably just as dumb

First off they didn’t just “allow” Liz Cheney, they actively campaigned with her. But secondly and more importantly, it’s not about whether it was right or wrong for that to influence people’s decisions, it’s about the fact that it likely did. Call it “dumb” or “irrational” all you want, if voters were all rational and intelligent then maybe we wouldn’t have to think or care about messaging or image at all, but that’s not the world we live in.

The influence of “bots” is highly overstated and is basically just a way of dismissing legitimate criticism and preventing any kind of self-reflection or learning from mistakes.

Liberals will say shit like this and then be baffled why leftists don’t want to fall in line behind the party of moderate fascists.

You throw trans people under the bus and you also lose, or at least depress turnout, of everyone who supports trans rights. You also make it clear to every minority that if they’re in the crosshairs next, they’ll be sacrificed next for the same reasons of political convenience. Jews represented <1% of the population of Weimar Germany, and you may be familiar with a poem about what happened after they came for them.

Furthermore, by ceding ground to the Republicans on this you make them look correct and you discredit your own side for having previously denounced their position as bigoted, which makes people more likely to support Republicans. We saw this happen with the border, when the Democrats turned from “Building the wall is racist” to “We’re the ones who are actually going to build the wall,” they didn’t win over moderate republicans, instead they lost on virtually every demographic. The people who are pro-immigration hated it and the people who are anti-immigration saw their views as being validated and if they had any lingering reservations about voting Republican, those reservations vanished.

Framing politics as a Trolley Problem is extremely stupid, and fundamentally not how the world works, it’s liberal brainrot and one of the reasons Democrats are worthless. They literally did this “strategic” sacrifice with Palestinians and immigrants (and it’s not like they fully supported trans rights either) and they still ate shit with the worst electoral map since the Republicans took California. When throwing trans people to the wolves doesn’t work, which minority will you sacrifice next?

Tankies… calling socialist countries that succeeded with market socialism revisionist “Tito is a revisionist prick delaying global Revolution”

Hate to break it to you but supporting Tito would make you a tankie in the eyes of most people on Lemmy who use the term (though you may get a pass for denouncing others).

Shadowrun: Dragonfall, it’s only for one mission but it’s a really good one.