Liberalism - Blog Posts
hey y'all! now you must be thinking, tumblr isn't any place for misogyny! we'd detect it immediately! but not to worry, my friends. there is always a little space everywhere for a little bit of woman-hating. You can spread hate against women as long as you say 'white', 'straight', or better, 'white and straight'. Shove those two words in and BAM!! instant hit. You're so liberal now! no one will ever detect any misogyny!
Controlled Opposition: A Theory
y'all ever thought abt how progressive far left shit tries to seem... but it's the opposite? like, you ever been watching some far left leaning show or reading from some far left leaning blog or smth and heard/seen some shit like "obviously, that's racist" "anyone can see that it's wrong to (x)" "come on, (x) is just blatant bigotry"??? the "reverse racism" bullshit? the fat acceptance movement telling morbidly obese ppl to keep on living the way they do (which, btw, is fucking deadly)? the fucking "all men are stupid" attitude? and oh my god the blackwashing. the fucking blackwashing. is whitewashing is bad (which it DEFINITELY is), then why isn't blackwashing?
n if you don't agree right off the bat on everything, you get the stamp of "bigot". that scares me man. a mentality says that if you don't agree you're bad. and none of these ppl are morally superior or "progressive", not a damn one. they just follow the leader. "k whatever you say" like fucking sheep. i'll tell you what, all these progressive liberals n 3rd wave feminists, near none of em would have stood up for gays 100 years ago, or for slaves 200 years ago. because it wasn't "popular". it wasn't a hip thing to do, wasn't common sense how it is now. like get off ur damn high horse
It’s not lost on me that Bernie Sanders is the only mainstream politician touring the country rn listening to Americans’ concerns, giving them hope that a better world is still possible. Not campaigning for President, not an election year, just inspiring swing town voters to use their power to incite change in their communities.
Bernie is 83yo, doing the work that every single Democrat could be doing simply in their own district. He’s packing overflow rooms by the thousands in suburban and rural towns, not “democratic strongholds”. It is possible to get through the next four years but the status quo Dems aren’t going to make that happen.
Imagine what a true progressive party could do for the US. Leftist policy is popular and wins elections. Bernie and others have told us this for decades. If you tuned out his message before, I have to wonder what side you’re truly on. Because his shtick has not wavered with everyday Americans.
Not me, us.
It is funny how the words "liberal" and "liberalism", in the US, have a very different meaning from what we say here. Here, "liberal" is more aligned with the right wing in economic matters. Liberals defend the end of state-owned intervention in economics and less taxes, it is more related to that than behaviour or social believes. Liberalism benefits the rich as it also defends the end of public institutions like the health public system or universities. This is why it is associated with right-wingers. On social aspects, they tend to be more conservatives, but maybe you'll see liberal activist who support gay marriage or the legalization of marijuana, but also they are pro-gun and against abortion (individual freedom).
There are left winger liberals, but this is a ehole other storie.
Can you tell I’m upset yet?
HEY PLEASE READ !!
if you guys AT ALL enjoy using the internet whether it's for news, entertainment, or communication purposes there is a bill floating around right now that has a good possibility of being passed that will influence the way we ALL use the internet. this bill is called KOSA and it presents itself as "kids online safety act" but in reality it is and will try to sensor SO much important information out there about LGBTQ+, POC communities, feminism and women's rights, and so much more. the bill targets mainly people under 17 but this bill will affect adults too. your favorite social media and websites will become highly cleansed from anything the government deems as "dangerous" to children online. one of the ways they are trying to ensure kids aren't accessing content that is "dangerous" enforces EVERYONE to upload private information or a photo of your ID to access social media apps and websites. IF YOU CARE AT ALL ABOUT PROTECTING FREE SPEACH ON THE INTERNET AND THE WAY WE USE IT TO COMMUNICATE PLEASE HELP ENSURE THAT THIS BILL DOES NOT PASS.
CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS TO SHOE THAT YOU DO NOT SUPPORT THE KOSA BILL.
PLEASE REBLOG AND SHARE !!!!
HERE IS A FREE PETITION YOU CAN SIGN TO HELP:
THIS.
The nazis that you see in movies are as much a historical fantasy as vikings with horned helmets and samurai cutting people in half.
The nazis were not some vague evil that wanted to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. They had specific goals which furthered a far right agenda, and they wanted to do harm to very specific groups, (largely slavs, jews, Romani, queer people, communists/leftists, and disabled people.)
The nazis didn't use soldiers in creepy gas masks as their main imagery that they sold to the german people, they used blond haired blue eyed families. Nor did they stand up on podiums saying that would wage an endless and brutal war, they gave speeches about protecting white Christian society from degenerates just like how conservatives do today.
Nazis weren't atheists or pagans. They were deeply Christian and Christianity was part of their ideology just like it is for modern conservatives. They spoke at lengths about defending their Christian nation from godless leftism. The ones who hated the catholic church hated it for protestant reasons. Nazi occultism was fringe within the party and never expected to become mainstream, and those occultists were still Christian, none of them ever claimed to be Satanists or Asatru.
Nazis were also not queer or disabled. They killed those groups, before they had a chance to kill almost anyone else actually. Despite the amount of disabled nazis or queer/queer coded nazis you'll see in movies and on TV, in reality they were very cishet and very able bodied. There was one high ranking nazi early on who was gay and the other nazis killed him for that. Saying the nazis were gay or disabled makes about as much sense as saying they were Jewish.
The nazis weren't mentally ill. As previously mentioned they hated disabled people, and this unquestionably included anyone neurodivergent. When the surviving nazi war criminals were given psychological tests after the war, they were shown to be some of the most neurotypical people out there.
The nazis weren't socialists. Full stop. They hated socialists. They got elected on hating socialists. They killed socialists. Hating all forms of lefitsm was a big part of their ideology, and especially a big part of how they sold themselves.
The nazis were not the supervillians you see on screen, not because they didn't do horrible things in real life, they most certainly did, but because they weren't that vague apolitical evil that exists for white American action heros to fight. They did horrible things because they had a right wing authoritarian political ideology, an ideology that is fundamentally the same as what most of the modern right wing believes.
What is Brendan Eich?
Nearly everyone has heard of how Brendan Eich, Mozilla's former CEO, stepped down because of a scandal around his contribution to an organization that sought to ban gay marriage. Conservatives and liberals have been engaging in heated debates on this matter and this post isn't to determine who's right or who's wrong. What it is meant to discover is the phenomenon itself.
The interpretations I've encountered are:
#1: Opposing liberals meant that Eich made a strategically wrong step. Admitting to failure, he decided to step down.
#2: His personal standpoint went against the very mission of Mozilla, which was not creating profit but spreading openness, freedom and such with a diverse community.
These arguments. however, don't directly lead to the actual consequences. The reasons why these are misleading, inaccurate arguments are:
#1: Even though in politics and everyday life we all try to bring our own views to victory, a liberal couldn't oppose Eich. A liberal answer to his donation would have been nothing but total respect. That is because such a reply would be in favor of diversity, although all-inclusive includes the ones, who don't agree even with inclusiveness. There are many forms of liberalism but none of them would scold Eich's contribution to that organization. In summary, he couldn't oppose liberalism in a way that would lead liberalism away.
#2: Brendan Eich made his contribution as an independent individual, back in 2008. Now he spoke against everything that could oppose the gay society. He realized that holding up such views would definitely infringe Mozilla's mission. Still, his altered position promoted diversity. One could say that he is responsible for the collectivity of his actions but he actually faced this past act of his, trying to make it fit to the company's mission. Opposing Eich would actually mean failing this mission because at least toward him they close their imaginary gates and would exclude him.
What I'm trying to articulate is that there cannot be any idealistic reason to support his stepping down. On what grounds do many support it then?
(Before making my thesis, I want to note, once more that I'm not saying Eich was right or wrong when donating to the anti-gay organization, neither the same about his stepping down. Now back to the point...)
What this case tells us is that though people sympathize with liberalism or communitarianism or anything else, most of them don't actually belong to them. Eich's opposition (the kind, which doesn't only have a different view but instead is actively against him/agrees with his resignation) doesn't consist of liberals or any other group of idealists, instead of people, who may sympathize with them but they themselves are essentially different.
Carl Schmitt wrote that the main function of politics is to distinguish between friend and enemy. Schmitt wasn't a liberal--more importantly he wasn't an idealist but a realist.
Eich's opposition makes an enemy out of him. They called on Mozilla users to uninstall their browser and stop using their products. They took up a fight against him with smart methods, ones, which were enough to make the continuation of his being a CEO impossible.
It's not a question whether or not Eich was right but whether or not he is a friend to us. Not a liberal community opposed him but rather a realist one that, at best, only serves a liberal community. They can sympathize with liberals but they can't be them.
The reason why I thought this whole matter important to see is that it's not the age of idealism any more. Of course I can't deal an absolute in regards of this because the political sphere is very mixed and while there are realists in it, we can just as easily name another huge group of idealists. My ultimate point is that this presently emerging trend is, contrary to popular statements, not liberalism, or any other form of idealism but realism instead, where one can't rely on rights or morals, only on the inclinations of those, possessing power.
love when tumblr leftists are so desperate to lick autocrat’s boots that they just. outright lie. saw someone today claiming that homosexuality was never illegal in either the USSR or the DDR (that statement is demonstrably false, if you didn’t know)
it makes my job as an evil liberal painting socialists as insane freedom-hating authoritarians so simple. getting my CIA paycheck will be easy this month :)
I disagree. liberalism has been, on the whole, a positive force.
Let’s look at the achievements of liberals:
- ended the transatlantic slave trade
- drastically reduced the power of the British monarch and Lords in favour of a democratic parliamentary system
- the French Revolution
- spread ideas of liberty and democracy to all of Europe, eventually leading to the decline and fall of the European autocracies
- the Revolutions of 1848
- the creation of Italy and Germany (which I will admit was probably an L in the long run)
- ended slavery in America (yes, the Republicans of Lincoln’s time were liberals)
- beat the Kaiser
- overthrew the Tsar and ended Russian feudalism (yes, that was the liberals. The Soviets only overthrew them later after the Republic was already established)
- liberated Ireland (while the later IRA were socialists, Michael Collins’ IRA was liberal and republican)
- beat the Nazis (the Soviets could not have won without American aid)
- decolonization (it was mostly American pressure that forced the French and British to decolonize, not Soviet.)
- liberated Eastern Europe from the USSR
- liberal democracies were the first states to decriminalize homosexuality and legalize gay marriage
And more that I don’t have time to list here.
I reiterate. No state is perfect. But America’s rivals are cartoonishly evil. The Chinese are committing a genocide as we speak. The Russians are invading a sovereign republic for no other reason than imperial expansion. The United States is practically a saint in comparison.
as trans activists we have GOT to get more comfortable with embracing the idea that we are a threat to the usamerican status quo. no more of this "we're the real america lovers, we make america great" shit. usamerica isn't and should not be made great, because it is a racist imperialist patriarchal state that has caused huge amounts of death and devastation worldwide. all our struggles are interconnected.
we should not be licking the ideological boots of a political system that gives zero shits about any of us, we should be dismantling it and replacing it with something that does. if trans existence is a threat to this country, then GOOD. I'm fucking proud of that. and you should be too.
seething and malding rn after reading a Jacobin article about Robespierre where they said he is “often invoked by liberals as a Stalin-like tyrant”
bitch he WAS a liberal. The entire revolution was the epitome of liberalism. I fucking hate how authoritarian communists like Jacobin have stolen its legacy (they even stole the name!)
they even bring up the “economic radicalism” of the Revolution - which was capitalism! it was radical because it overthrew the dominant feudal-mercantilist order. But irony is completely lost on communists because they’re braindead idiots.
Here
I was walking home today, and I walked by a bulletin board, it had all sorts of presidential election posters, some torn some not, and a big anarchy symbol spray painted on top. Probs the most dope thing I saw for a while
I was walking home today, and I walked by a bulletin board, it had all sorts of presidential election posters, some torn some not, and a big anarchy symbol spray painted on top. Probs the most dope thing I saw for a while
THIS.
The nazis that you see in movies are as much a historical fantasy as vikings with horned helmets and samurai cutting people in half.
The nazis were not some vague evil that wanted to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. They had specific goals which furthered a far right agenda, and they wanted to do harm to very specific groups, (largely slavs, jews, Romani, queer people, communists/leftists, and disabled people.)
The nazis didn't use soldiers in creepy gas masks as their main imagery that they sold to the german people, they used blond haired blue eyed families. Nor did they stand up on podiums saying that would wage an endless and brutal war, they gave speeches about protecting white Christian society from degenerates just like how conservatives do today.
Nazis weren't atheists or pagans. They were deeply Christian and Christianity was part of their ideology just like it is for modern conservatives. They spoke at lengths about defending their Christian nation from godless leftism. The ones who hated the catholic church hated it for protestant reasons. Nazi occultism was fringe within the party and never expected to become mainstream, and those occultists were still Christian, none of them ever claimed to be Satanists or Asatru.
Nazis were also not queer or disabled. They killed those groups, before they had a chance to kill almost anyone else actually. Despite the amount of disabled nazis or queer/queer coded nazis you'll see in movies and on TV, in reality they were very cishet and very able bodied. There was one high ranking nazi early on who was gay and the other nazis killed him for that. Saying the nazis were gay or disabled makes about as much sense as saying they were Jewish.
The nazis weren't mentally ill. As previously mentioned they hated disabled people, and this unquestionably included anyone neurodivergent. When the surviving nazi war criminals were given psychological tests after the war, they were shown to be some of the most neurotypical people out there.
The nazis weren't socialists. Full stop. They hated socialists. They got elected on hating socialists. They killed socialists. Hating all forms of lefitsm was a big part of their ideology, and especially a big part of how they sold themselves.
The nazis were not the supervillians you see on screen, not because they didn't do horrible things in real life, they most certainly did, but because they weren't that vague apolitical evil that exists for white American action heros to fight. They did horrible things because they had a right wing authoritarian political ideology, an ideology that is fundamentally the same as what most of the modern right wing believes.