74
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

They were just champing at the bit for an excuse to get more racist. I can't believe the utter heel turn with their border rhetoric

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1bauos4/biden_says_he_regrets_using_term_illegal_as_trump/?sort=controversial

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] [email protected] 64 points 6 months ago

Dems: stop attacking your own guy what. The. Fuck???

These are the people who insist that the GOP are a cult because their members aren’t allowed to criticize the leadership.

[-] [email protected] 46 points 6 months ago

I got banned from /r/politics for a week today because I said being a genocide denier is a bad look. I didn't even call anyone a genocide denier. The user picked up the badge and pinned it to their own chest

[-] [email protected] 54 points 6 months ago

the way redditors write is very annoying to read.

[-] [email protected] 38 points 6 months ago

I don't know what's worse. The drive by glibness or the verbose "smarter than you" adult in the room shit

[-] [email protected] 29 points 6 months ago

In any case they tend to be pretty condescending and incurious. There’s also a distinct bombastic writing style that I find pretty grating.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

What, you don't appreciate all of them commenting like smug Marvel characters that got ahold of a thesaurus beforehand?

[-] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

:this:

how dare you state facts and logic, sir

[-] [email protected] 34 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

It's hilarious that these liberals are surprised that Cuban immigrants to the United States are right wing and support Trump. Are they so racist that they think that all Latinos are the same and automatically vote Democrat? Do they realise that many of the Cuban immigrants to the US were part of the land owning bourgeois class and were always very right wing, in the same way that many "immigrants/expats" from global south countries that had a revolution or change of government are? South African immigrants/expats after 1994 are another perfect example of this phenomenon.

[-] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Are they so racist that they think that all Latinos are the same and automatically vote Democrat?

Yes, and it's quite funny too. When you get down to it there's all sorts of latin american migrants in the US. And the ones likely to vote Democrat probably won't get the right to do so.

I tried to make the point that the sort of person that has the money to migrate to the US in a way that they get to vote is likely a wealthy person whose only connection to the home country is exploiting its health care system. Not to mention that countries in Latin America are a) amongst the most religious conservative in the world; and b) becoming less catholic and more puritan because the pope is too woke for them. I was told I was racist against latinos.

I think there's also a counterpart to this as a bet that Republican's notion of whiteness can't expand to include 'mexicans and other latinos'. Which is only true in so far as it bars potentially democrat migrants from voting. Right wingers do not care that the right wing hates them on the grounds of race or culture. A gay man who's a right winger will keep voting Republican because they know they are protected by their wealth and/or class. Likewise for the white passing Latino that moves from 'Communist Homeland' to Miami. They voted for the 'Tropical Trump' before, and they'll vote for the real deal as soon as they are able.

[-] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago

Also to do with your last paragraph, Latino isn't even a racial group as most US citizens understand it, quite a few Latinos are just straight up white, like most people from Uruguay and Argentina for example. And then obviously you get Afro-Latinos as well. But I guess that's too complicated for US citizens, who just view all Latinos as impoverished Mexican immigrants.

[-] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago

Didn't you know? South America is a country, not a continent. maybe-later-kiddo

[-] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

"Do they realise that many of the Cuban immigrants to the US were part of the land owning bourgeois class and were always very right wing, in the same way that many "immigrants/expats" from global south countries that had a revolution or change of government are?"

Of course they don't. Liberals don't understand or even bother to learn history. That is precisely why they are liberals.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago

Liberals don't consider things like class or material analysis

The people coming to the US are part of an ethnic minority group, so liberals believe that they 'should be' voting liberal because liberals are slightly less openly terrible to non white people. Then they become shocked when

A. The people coming in are not some homogenized mass of liberal voters and

B. Being 'slightly less terrible' isn't really a selling point

[-] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

I'm not seeing many liberals in these comments. When I look at their comment histories they seem to be garden variety conservatives. The liberals I do see defending Biden are more doing the standard "Trump is worse, stop attacking Biden" which is shitty but not mask-off racism imo

[-] [email protected] 51 points 6 months ago

Unfortunately you just stepped into the Hexbear trap. Below you will find a hundred correct comments about how conservatives are neoliberals and that neoliberalism is just another arm of fascism anyway.

I hope you stick around and read and learn in good faith though it'll be good for ya.

[-] [email protected] 32 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Below you will find a hundred correct comments

monkey-typewriter

As proponents of (small r) republicanism, constitutionalism, rule of law (which they refer to as 'law and order'), free markets, and private property, American 'conservatives' are indeed Liberals. They just advocate for shittier public policy. There is nothing inherently progressive about Liberalism. The United States was simultaneously a slave plantation oligarchy and a Liberal Democracy.

The presence of universal suffrage and civil liberties are concessions which took centuries to extract from the Liberals, by social movements with many Communist organizers at their core. And yet under Liberal Democracy, we still have legal slavery, lack universal sufferage (felony disenfranchisment along with a vast legally constructed underclass of undocumented workers), and civil liberties which only exist if you can afford a well connected Harvard-educated lawyer.

[-] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago

It'll be awhile before we get to 100. Some of us are working our dog walking jobs and others are waiting for our xibux to clear. Give us a minute

[-] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago

With China being on the edge of collapse, you're damn right I'm waiting for my xibucks to clear.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

theres are plenty of sane commenters, they just seem to be downvoted every time.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago

Hexbear doesn't have downvotes. The difference in votes is just from the massive weight of your shitty opinions.

[-] [email protected] 29 points 6 months ago

Liberalism, the primary political ideology of capitalism, includes conservatives and "moderates" and "progressives" in the United States' alleged political discourse. It can include conservatives because liberalism has been around long enough that every family member a person can remember has been some kind of liberal and they want to keep things "their" way going forward. To be conservative is to resist change.

However, plenty of self-described progressives do all the things you describe. They're pretty damn racist, for example, they just use their own "acceptable" language to describe it. Their opposition to Palestinians, for example, is frequently predicated on:

  • Calling them terrorists
  • Calling them Arabs
  • Reducing their identity to Muslim and their struggle to the person's islamophobia
  • White supremacist rhetoric like "Israelis made the desert bloom" and "a people without a land for a land without a people"
  • Recycled settler-colonial rhetoric that was used (and still is) against indigenous Americans

Progressive and "moderate" liberals call themselves non-racist and a foil to the style of racism that those to their right explicitly spell out and embrace, but they still harbor racism for the exact same reasons: to justify violence done to people they should otherwise sympathize and have solidarity with.

Also some of them aren't even subtle and are basically klan members.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

I am aware of the different meanings of liberalism; it just makes no sense to me (in this context) to interpret "libs" in that way. Who cares if conservatives are doing mask-off racism in a political thread? They always do that. And of course I agree that progressives are racist in "acceptable" ways, but that would be another way of saying mask-on racism. And while progressives sometimes do straight up mask-off racism, that's not something I saw in the comment thread. In any case, just because someone identifies as progressive or espouses progressive beliefs in one area does not mean all of their beliefs are progressive or hold in line with what most other progressives think.

I also just think it's misguided


except in specific circumstances


to use the term "liberal" to mean something different than it is commonly understood to mean. But I should have been more aware that on hexbear people are more likely to mean it in the academic sense.

[-] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago

Friend the definition we use is not simply an "academic meaning" IT IS THE DEFINITION

Anything else is political illiteracy, no doubt reinforced through pop culture or Internet memery. Do you see how you've twisted yourself into knots trying to divide and catalog the mindsets between those so-called conservatives, "liberals", and progressives? It's pointless they're all subspecies of the same ideology, the liberals in that thread are not violating some sacred progressive liberal value with their racism, nor are they tapping into some inherent conservatism that invalidates their liberalism, it's all tactical differences not fundamental ones

They are simply liberals doing what liberals have always done, dividing and demoralizing the working class in defense of a pro-capitalist status quo and racism has always been a favored tool; of course many of them are also politically illiterate and are simply doing it out of a sort of social muscle memory, but end of the day they're still liberals

[-] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Friend the definition we use is not simply an "academic meaning" IT IS THE DEFINITION

Words almost always have multiple definitions and are context dependent. "Liberal" fits the bill on both counts.

Clarifying what definition you're using is fine, but it's silly to claim that's the only definition, especially when the vast majority of U.S. political discourse uses a different one.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

What you're arguing is "I know there is an actual meaning used in political discussions, but I have chosen to ignore that in favour of the alternate colloquial meaning that doesn't make sense contextually". Just shut up.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Pedantic redditbrain bullshit

The OP links to r/politics, which like the rest of U.S. mainstream political discussion takes "liberal" to mean "aligned with the Democratic Party." Someone from midwest.social drops in to say "these look like conservatives, not liberals," referencing the same context.

Then a bunch of Hexbear posters trip over themselves to say nerd "uhh ackshually these are all liberals in the classic sense," a point that adds nothing and that the midwest.social user already knows. Even after that user clarifies they already get this, and are referring to the partisan split in the U.S., people here still have to show how smart and correct they are instead of a simple "ah I see we're on the same page."

This is the way normal people interact with others and will bring the revolution any day now

[-] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

I guess I don't get what we're doing here if we aren't going to discuss politics the way this site was meant to. If you want to use the pop culture definitions to defend the status quo, I recommend clicking the link, signing up for reddit and turning off your brain.

We're trying to learn and make a difference here.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

We're trying to learn and make a difference here.

Agreed -- but education involves stuff like assessing people's current understanding, clearly communicating items that may be new to them, and thinking about how what you're saying is being received. A lot of folks are failing at all three here.

The original post isn't at all clear about how it's defining "liberal" (and the context it links to uses the most common definition in the U.S.). No one recognizes that the person who came in and used that common definition is doing so because of the way it was communicated. Even when that person states they already understand the different definitions, they're met with further detail on a definition they just said they already know, and are firmly told they are wrong, which itself is wrong.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Even when that person states they already understand the different definitions, they're met with further detail on a definition they just said they already know, and are firmly told they are wrong, which itself is wrong.

Except they clearly did not understand the "different definitions" and did require further detail on the ACTUAL definition, we do not need to get bogged down in the million-and-one specific personalized and incoherent configurations of liberalism, we instead look at the common characteristics of liberalism as it dwells in Existing Power and how it structures and molds the society we live in

I was describing the Titanic, you want us to describe the specific personnel arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic, in education an accurate perspective and a sense of scale is critical for full comprehension

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

we do not need to get bogged down in the million-and-one specific personalized and incoherent configurations of liberalism

The most common definition of liberal in the U.S., by far, is "broadly associated with the Democratic Party." This is the definition used by every mainstream media source, and even throughout much of academica.

It's ridiculous to simply ignore the reality of how people commonly use words.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

The most common definition of liberal in the U.S., by far, is "broadly associated with the Democratic Party."

Again, that has no useful content, it can cover anything from demoralized social liberalism, to ecstatic neoliberalism and every crank liberalism in between, while simultaneously and incorrectly excluding those liberals aligned with the Republican Party or nonaligned at all ex. "I'm not a liberal I'm independent" absolute gibberish that has no bearing on American liberalism let alone global liberalism

Which is why it's better to zoom out and take into account the actual contents of liberalism, which is its reification of capitalist property relations and the atomization of the working class, which the reality of how people commonly experience liberalism politically, especially in the US

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

that has no useful content

The useful content is I can say "liberal" to about anyone in the U.S. and they will know I'm referring to a set of policies broadly under the umbrella of the Democratic Party. If I say "liberal" while referring to the GOP, most will not understand my usage.

The fact that there are other definitions that (in the right context) are more precise, or useful, or coherent, does not mean the common definition isn't real, or is incorrect. It's how people use it; it's a real definition. There is no reason to refuse to acknowledge it.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

they will know I'm referring set of policies broadly under the umbrella of the Democratic Party

You mean the set of policies that's anti-immigration today but was pro-immigration five years ago? That was anti-queer 15 years ago but is now kinda indifferent to queer people today even tho it was more pro-queer five years ago? The set of policies that was racist sixty years ago and is still pretty racist today, but people colloquially think it's not anymore, unless you're the wrong kind of POC?

Yeah that's a useful and coherent definition that totally isn't hiding the true nature of liberalism behind a veneer

I mean hey 75 million plus Trump loving dipshits believe liberalism under the Democratic Party is the new communism so it must be true. It's how people use it, right? So it's a real definition; like orks from 40k we can shift reality with our collective will, but apparently we still can't shift the set of policies

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

What's your argument here then? That they were being willfully ignorant? You're accusing me of redditbrain, but your comment is incoherent holier than thou "but technically" whinging. Just shut up.

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

There is no content or coherence to the "colloquial" definition, the ideology we call liberalism has a history, a set of a priori assumptions of the world, a roster of multiple internal schools of thought (none of which mesh with the colloquial understanding), and most important an actually existing record of real world policies that define it's true function and scope in the world

You can claim a million billion people think liberalism is sunshine and roses, that still wouldn't make it true

[-] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

You can claim a million billion people think liberalism is sunshine and roses, that still wouldn't make it true

Words mean what people think they mean. The vast majority of Americans use "liberal" and "conservative" interchangeably with Democratic and Republican policies, so in that context (which is the context of the r/politics thread) "liberal" is fairly read as "aligned with Democrats." That's a valid definition because it's how most people actually use the word.

Claiming that your preferred definition is the only real definition, and the hundreds of millions of people who use the most common definition are all wrong, is nonsensical and will get you nothing but endless semantic slapfights.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Words mean what people think they mean.

Yeah if those people had power, a political education and sustained control over the levers of knowledge production

so in that context (which is the context of the r/politics thread) "liberal" is fairly read as "aligned with Democrats." That's a valid definition because it's how most people actually use the word.

Except our non-hexbear friend asserted those liberals in that thread aren't liberals because they sound like "garden variety conservatives" but they're not (according to the colloquial definition), they're "democrat aligned" Biden supporters pissing and moaning about people upset over Biden's anti-immigration stance (oh look anti-immigration from the liberal dems, another violation of the vaunted colloquial definition)

So that tells us not only were you not paying attention to what op was saying, but that the definition that you're holding up as the gold standard (because millions of American don't have a political education) can't even hold up in the thread you gave as an example cat-confused

Which is why political education is important and colloquial understanding that isn't even colloquial is not

load more comments (12 replies)
[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Look, you’re not going to find any support here with this take.

I once made a thread asking Hexbears to tone down their rhetoric so it’s more welcoming to the vast majority of the outside people, and 99% of the responses were a firm no.

People here aren’t going to give up using the materialist definition of liberalism just to pander to the libs.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I see the same thing happening -- it's a fast track to an ultraleftist dead end.

It's also worth noting that recognizing what non-leftists mean when they speak is not pandering, but a prerequisite to effective communication. We're abandoning talking to people out of eagerness to dunk on anything that moves.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[-] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

It's what liberal means everywhere except the incoherent myopia of American political illiteracy where people like to pretend that Reagan and Obama had different political ideologies.

Re: racism and liberals, every example I gave is mask-off racism and you'll find they're very common among liberals, including "progressives". They just normalize it to each other and tell themselves they aren't racist, happily living with the contradiction. Mask-on vs mask-off racism is about hiding racism that someone acknowledges, which is a different thing.

I bet if you revisit the thread with a critical lens you'll find some lib racism.

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
74 points (100.0% liked)

the_dunk_tank

15681 readers
225 users here now

It's the dunk tank.

This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.

Rule 1: All posts must include links to the subject matter, and no identifying information should be redacted.

Rule 2: If your source is a reactionary website, please use archive.is instead of linking directly.

Rule 3: No sectarianism.

Rule 4: TERF/SWERFs Not Welcome

Rule 5: No ableism of any kind (that includes stuff like libt*rd)

Rule 6: Do not post fellow hexbears.

Rule 7: Do not individually target other instances' admins or moderators.

Rule 8: The subject of a post cannot be low hanging fruit, that is comments/posts made by a private person that have low amount of upvotes/likes/views. Comments/Posts made on other instances that are accessible from hexbear are an exception to this.

Rule 9: if you post ironic rage bait im going to make a personal visit to your house to make sure you never make this mistake again

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS