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Liberals: We love LGBTQ+ folks.
Their bosses: New policy: fuck LGBTQ+ folks.
Liberals: Well, that’s ok too, we guess.
@aral The reality of course is, that if you put people in a precarious enough situation, they’ll so what you want out of fear.
@gimulnautti Yeah, those poor precarious software engineers working in Big Tech with six figure salaries and stock options. One’s heart does bleed for the poor bastards.
@aral @gimulnautti they can be part of the solution if they just push schechy shit on Fridays
@BlazarKnight @aral wasn’t talking about those people.
We have poor liberals too here. Sorry my poor American.
@gimulnautti @aral meta union sounds cool
@gimulnautti @BlazarKnight @aral we're all precarious around here
@aral @gimulnautti let's not be reductive, a lot of modern people working in software barely make enough to survive, and we should not discount how capital has slowly eroded the concept of job security into a joke and keeps everyone living paycheck to paycheck so that the lower classes dare not stand up to their superiors.
@aral straight from the Orange Site. The comment section is just as insane.
"Liberal is an old timey word that makes wealthy White folks comfortable" - the word Socialist which does not
Seems that to some the LGBTQ community is like an object, you toss it away when having it no longer seems cool. Forgetting possessions are just that, the LGBTQ community are people with feelings, hopes and fears like everyone else.
We need to get back our humanity before it is too late, if not too late already.
@dbattistella @aral help me @OCRbot my eyes are so bad
@SallyStrange @dbattistella @OCRbot Not OCRbot but here you go (saw it got it garbled):
@aral @dbattistella thanks so much, that was a bit frustrating
@dbattistella Alt text: first photo: screenshot of social media post:
Jason Hickel V @jasonhickel|
XI ...
The problem with liberalism is that it rests on a fundamental contradiction that cannot be resolved. It will always fail, it will always collapse, and this explains everything about our current moment.
Liberals try to hold two commitments at once: on the one hand, they are firmly committed to capitalism; on the other, they express support for principles like human rights, democracy, equality, freedom of speech, environment and the rule of law. This duality is the core of liberalism.
But there's a problem. Capital accumulation requires cheapening labour and nature. This eventually comes into direct conflict with principles like rights and equality. And whenever this conflict appears, the liberal ruling class sides with capital, abandons their lofty principles, and throws workers and nature under the bus. Every. Single. Time.
This results in flagrant displays of hypocrisy. They run on nice-sounding platforms but end up either betraying their promises or actively working against their stated values. They'll slash public services, bail out banks, imprison journalists, beat up students, expand fracking, coup democratically elected leaders in the global South, bomb liberation movements, fund a genocide - they'll even trash international law itself - anything that's needed to maintain the conditions for capital accumulation.
At most, they may try to negotiate mediocre compromises, a few social policies here and there - some abortion rights, a tiny increase in the minimum wage - but nothing that might pose any serious threat to capital accumulation. Thus the soul-crushing slowness of liberal incrementalism. Ultimately they are unwilling to take any of the obvious steps that would actually resolve our urgent social and ecological crises.
This is why nobody trusts liberal politicians. This is why they come across as so fantastically insincere, and even sneering. This is why they feel so spineless and *empty*.
@dbattistella Alt text, second photo, continuation of same post:
This results in flagrant displays of hypocrisy. They run on nice-sounding platforms but end up either betraying their promises or actively working against their stated values. They'll slash public services, bail out banks, imprison journalists, beat up students, expand fracking, coup democratically elected leaders in the global South, bomb liberation movements, fund a genocide - they'll even trash international law itself - anything that's needed to maintain the conditions for capital accumulation.
At most, they may try to negotiate mediocre compromises, a few social policies here and there - some abortion rights, a tiny increase in the minimum wage - but nothing that might pose any serious threat to capital accumulation. Thus the soul-crushing slowness of liberal incrementalism. Ultimately they are unwilling to take any of the obvious steps that would actually resolve our urgent social and ecological crises.
This is why nobody trusts liberal politicians. This is why they come across as so fantastically insincere, and even sneering. This is why they feel so spineless and *empty*.
The center cannot hold. Liberalism will always collapse, inevitably handing power to fascists, and this is not acceptable. There is only one way to overcome this deadly impasse, and that is to mobilize a socialist alternative. A political movement that can unite the working-classes, overcome capitalism, deliver real economic democracy, and enable us to achieve rapid progress toward social and ecological goals.
12:16 PM • Nov 11, 2024 • 465.7K Views
Exactly this. I would add that liberalism is not a transhistorical set of ideas or values - democracy, freedom, human rights, etc - but a historically specific ideology that came together in the Enlightenment. It is, precisely, the ideology of capitalism (and those ideas and values it claims like democracy and human rights are to be found in various forms in many different cultures).
This is why its central contradiction, that Hickel identifies, was present at its very inception, in the fact that the Founding Fathers could declare 'all men are created equal' but own slaves, or that John Locke or Voltaire - or any of Liberalism's great progenitors - were guilty of similar contradictory beliefs.
And it is, of course, why 'democracy' is sidelined now in the parliamentary space, but never extended into the workplace.
Anybody know, by the way, why Jason Hickel seems to have stopped posting here ?
So I guess the only valid alternative is communism as capitalism is what has delivered us to this state of crisis
@Paulos_the_fog @aral @dbattistella What’s wrong with offering socialism as the alternative? Why do you need to raise the spectre of another proven-failed ideology?
I would define socialism as a form of communism. I would dispute the premise that communism has ever been tried and failed, although I acknowledge that a lot of things that have been called 'communism', have been tried and have largely failed!
@Paulos_the_fog @aral @dbattistella
I think that’s backwards. I could accept that communism is a form of socialism, albeit an extreme and dysfunctional one. And the ‘no true Scotsman’ argument to defend communism is weak. The evidence so far is that ‘pure’ communism cannot exist, thanks to human nature.
@KimSJ @Paulos_the_fog @aral @dbattistella
Ironically some of what most people would consider conservative religious sects might come closest.
@KimSJ @Paulos_the_fog @aral @dbattistella
"the ‘no true Scotsman’ argument to defend communism is weak. The evidence so far is that ‘pure’ communism cannot exist, thanks to human nature."
@Greengordon @KimSJ @aral @dbattistella
What induces you to think I give a shit what you think?
@Greengordon @KimSJ @aral @dbattistella
...and capitalism destroys civilized society due to untrammeled greed.
...and religion destroys civilized society due to bigoted extremism.
`Where to now?
@aral Generalizing with vague labels is lazy.
@farbel Oh, the irony.
@aral @farbel@mas.to "Liberal" is a "vague" label only to those who've been paying zero attention
@aral we really need to take a harder stance on things! Hate should never be tolerated.