Kid_Eternity
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Happens all the time with class focused politics, they can't see the wood for the trees...
Donald Trump - MAGAtwat news and discussion
- Thread starter tim
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littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It is perceived by many as an issue. It is used by many as an issue, of course. Scapegoat the newcomer and blame them for the struggles people are experiencing. Deflect away from the actual causes of the struggles.
Here in the UK, the prevalence of hostility towards immigrants is generally inversely proportional to the number of immigrants in an area. I'd be surprised if that same phenomenon didn't hold in the US. Most immigrants are in cities. Most cities don't vote for the likes of Trump or Reform in large numbers.
It's a problem, but we need to be very careful when categorising what kind of problem it is.
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
All politics is class
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Yeah I absolutely agree, my point was dealing with it (or the perception of it) from a left wing perspective is far more complicated that dealing with it when coming from the racist and/or right wing perspective.
a_chap
When the world came apart, where were you?
Disbanding the FDA - such a genius-level plan!
I mean, what could possibly go wrong doing that...
magneze
🎧
Aggressive suppression of sunshine and exercise?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Fair enough. I'd still say yes and no to that, though.
In many ways, "dealing with" issues around immigration is quite easy from a left wing perspective. Refugees welcome here deals with refugees. Immigrant workers deserve our solidarity mostly deals with economic migrants. And immigration is not in and of itself a problem, in fact we would be poorer both culturally and economcially without it deals with the wider ethos. (I'd go further and say Bring It On!, but you don't have to agree with me to agree that immigration doesn't have to be the big issue some insist that it is. It doesn't have to be cast as a problem at all.)
From that starting point, then what you're talking about is dealing with the concerns of others. And that is not always straightforward, but it helps when you have a clear and pretty simple starting position about what you think in order to counter arguments to do with, for example, housing costs or wage suppression, and identifying the real enemy.
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
Disbanding the FDA - such a genius-level plan!
I mean, what could possibly go wrong doing that...
The ghosts will escape containment and then who are they gonna call?
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
It’s true that the multiple threads all about the same thing doesn’t help. But are there people saying there’s no racism?
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
andysays
Love and solidarity
Your general point is true, the US has seen huge waves of immigration before.
The context is quite different though. The period of 1860 to 1920 was, in general in the US, a period of economic expansion so those migrants were easily absorbed into the workforce, indeed the expansion couldn't have happened without mass migration. But now we are all currently experiencing at best economic stagnation and in some sectors there is huge shrinkage.
And previous periods of mass migration into an expanding economy weren't without issues, including manipulation of "fear of the other" to divide the working class along racial lines.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
This is exactly my point, though. The big issue with immigration is anti-immigration itself. That remains true.
Also, I would sound a word of caution about the various figures emerging from both the US and the UK stating that net immigration has risen massively in the last few years. There have been changes in the methodologies used by agencies.
or what's being offered by Trump is what the working-class actually want
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
what, all of them?
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
If I actually believed that, I really would give up.
The point was that the right believes the left dominates the cultural space, hence why they constantly feel the need to push back against it, so your claim of hegemony is debateable (leftist views clearly have traction) .*
I didn't refer to working class people's perception of themselves, I referred to a general perception across the rest of society that working class people are unsuccessful. That there is an ongoing 'othering', or 'demonising' of the working class is not controversial. Do you think people see working class people as more or less successful than middle class people, or do you dispute that people frame their views in that way?
Cognitive dissonance. Fair point though.
* I did confuse hegemony with homogeniety.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yeah, gonna be some really fucking unpleasant stuff going on in the next few weeks. Bit like post-Brexit vote here. Regardless of whether or not you thought brexit was a good idea, you can't deny that it emboldened racists to be openly racist.
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
As much as we give flak to the Democrats and the Labour Party, and with good reason. There are differences between them and the Tories/ Republicans and one of them is who feels better the next day, who feels the more confident.
Another is that people can vote Labour or Democrat for essentially positive (if misguided) reasons, no on is voting for Trump for any positive reasons.
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
I wouldn’t say that, but there is a snese comming across that people calling Trumo supports rascists or whatever and are more to blame for Trump winning that those who voted for him.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yes, there is an ugliness to it that you cannot escape. Trump is a wannabe fascist dictator. There's no dressing up a vote for him as an act of solidarity with humanity, even a misguided one!
Aaronf
159.9 a litre
Very telling that the only 2 any right minded person would agree with are at the bottom. If they've put them on there to maybe balance their extreme ones - I dread to think what 'etc'. includes!
pug
Well-Known Member
Is this sense a feeling?
Lord Camomile
Yipchaa!
Maybe, in a very abstract sense, that is sort of the case for those that voted for him.
But I think the point (or at least part of it) is also that maybe if someone offered them a different way to get what they want, or even something different to want, then maybe what Trump offers wouldn't be as successful.
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
Just catching up on various things...
About focusing on bigotry vs "legitimate concerns" or whatever, this is what I mean by strategy, it's not about saying whether bigotry or people having economic worries is more important, it's what we can do with those things.
Like, if you start from people being bigoted, where does that lead you, what can you say? You can say "that's bad, you shouldn't do that", and maybe that's worthwhile in its way, but I dunno how likely that is to change anyone's mind. But if you start from people being worried about not being able to afford groceries, then you can say "I agree you should be able to afford groceries, but I don't think what you're doing is the best way of achieving that", and that seems more likely to go somewhere productive. And fwiw I think this has merit even if the bigotry is really important - hard to settle these things, I'm sure for many Trump voters, probably the majority, there's a confused and confusing mix of the bigotry and thinking eggs are too expensive, but even if we agreed to arbitrarily say that, say, 90% of Trump supporters are mostly driven by bigotry and 10% mostly care about the cost of eggs and toothpaste, a serious attempt at peeling off 10% of Trump's support would still be worthwhile and a good thing.
I mean, I suppose in the long run the end goal's anarchist communism, but as a medium-term goal I'd be happy with getting gestures wildly this fucking thing to stop happening.
About focusing on bigotry vs "legitimate concerns" or whatever, this is what I mean by strategy, it's not about saying whether bigotry or people having economic worries is more important, it's what we can do with those things.
Like, if you start from people being bigoted, where does that lead you, what can you say? You can say "that's bad, you shouldn't do that", and maybe that's worthwhile in its way, but I dunno how likely that is to change anyone's mind. But if you start from people being worried about not being able to afford groceries, then you can say "I agree you should be able to afford groceries, but I don't think what you're doing is the best way of achieving that", and that seems more likely to go somewhere productive. And fwiw I think this has merit even if the bigotry is really important - hard to settle these things, I'm sure for many Trump voters, probably the majority, there's a confused and confusing mix of the bigotry and thinking eggs are too expensive, but even if we agreed to arbitrarily say that, say, 90% of Trump supporters are mostly driven by bigotry and 10% mostly care about the cost of eggs and toothpaste, a serious attempt at peeling off 10% of Trump's support would still be worthwhile and a good thing.
What does this actually mean, though? Are we talking about killing all 72,743,156 (at last count) people who voted for Trump? Cos if you're doing that, I think it only seems sensible to also kill everyone who voted for the party that's arming Netanyahu, deporting migrants and taking oil production to record levels. I dunno what we're doing with non-voters and people who voted third party, but it'd be a bit rude to leave them out.
Appreciate you've dipped out of the conversation, but for the record, see above, IAF's approach seems to be exactly that.
Again, this isn't about blame, that's not that interesting to me. What I (and people who think like me?) am trying to do, no matter how ineptly, is to offer constructive critique about how to do things better in future. I'm not interested in offering constructive criticism to Trump or Trump supporters because I don't want them to do better, I want them to fail; I want antifascists (or however you define "our lot") to do well, which is why it's worth looking at our weaknesses.
Mostly covered in previous posts, but just to say - it's not about going around saying "class power", "what do you think of operaismo?", "have you heard of a man called Sergio Bologna?" or whatever, it's about "I think we should get a pay rise that keeps up with inflation", "I think we should get time and a half instead of flat rate for working overtime", "I reckon the letting agent needs to sort out that black mould without charging you any extra for it", "I don't reckon your landlord should be able to put the rent up by that much", etc etc etc. All that stuff is where class power is built, the stuff that it directly impacts on.
Again, I'm probably repeating myself here, but for me it's not "this reason is important and that reason isn't", it's "I think focusing on this reason opens up the possibility that people might be persuaded to think differently, and I can't see how focusing on that reason does".
Fwiw, I would say that at least part of the right's cultural hegemony consists precisely in the ability to keep people talking about nonsense like "wokeness" and not about the price of rent and eggs.
It is all bound up with post industrialisation which has been going on for at least three decades! With the decline of organised labour we have seen a rise of disgruntled working class voters who feel alienated from the liberalism or cosmopolitanism of Labour, the Democrats and any number of centre left social democratic parties in Europe. But the seeds of this disengagement actually goes even further back to the 60s and 70s which led to the growth in Green, feminist and other identity parties.
Working class voters are then left with the choice of going to the New right or left and where there is proportional electoral systems we have seen as challengers to the social democrats from the left like Syriza and Podemos but these have all failed very quickly. So the far right have instead been the beneficiaries which includes Reform in Britain and Trump in America where there isn’t a proportional system. But let’s not forget the anti-social liberal backlash that has fuelled these protest politics with abortion, trans and feminism all being exploited by parties of the right for electoral purposes.
But let’s break this down. What did the Brexit Conservative governments and Trump the first time round deliver for the working class? The immediate beneficiaries of the next Trump Presidency will be the ultra wealthy and ‘levelling up’ was just a joke about in bad taste. The far right anti-liberal nationalist movements are merely symptoms of the stasis of liberal democratic capitalism and certainly not ways to solve its systemic failures to solve the stalling (and in many cases decline) in general living standards.
After a couple of centuries or so of rising prosperity which benefited most voters democratic capitalism has hit a wall and nobody knows how to solve it - least of all oil snake salesmen like Trump and Musk. They lie. They chest. They divide. They conquer. But they have nothing to offer for the working class who will continue to work to be poor (something we have imported from America) and except the opportunity to vent against liberals, trans people, women and anyone else held in suspicion by ‘ordinary folk’.
Trump will be really horrible to immigrants whose plight his class has persecuted and helped impoverished. Americans will have to pay much more for the cars that pollute the atmosphere and pump out GHG emissions because they weren’t be able to buy cheaper, greener Chinese ones. The parasitic rich will be even richer and across America the poor will have to take jobs that keep them poor while all along a rambling senile of man in the White House will say America is great again!
Working class voters are then left with the choice of going to the New right or left and where there is proportional electoral systems we have seen as challengers to the social democrats from the left like Syriza and Podemos but these have all failed very quickly. So the far right have instead been the beneficiaries which includes Reform in Britain and Trump in America where there isn’t a proportional system. But let’s not forget the anti-social liberal backlash that has fuelled these protest politics with abortion, trans and feminism all being exploited by parties of the right for electoral purposes.
But let’s break this down. What did the Brexit Conservative governments and Trump the first time round deliver for the working class? The immediate beneficiaries of the next Trump Presidency will be the ultra wealthy and ‘levelling up’ was just a joke about in bad taste. The far right anti-liberal nationalist movements are merely symptoms of the stasis of liberal democratic capitalism and certainly not ways to solve its systemic failures to solve the stalling (and in many cases decline) in general living standards.
After a couple of centuries or so of rising prosperity which benefited most voters democratic capitalism has hit a wall and nobody knows how to solve it - least of all oil snake salesmen like Trump and Musk. They lie. They chest. They divide. They conquer. But they have nothing to offer for the working class who will continue to work to be poor (something we have imported from America) and except the opportunity to vent against liberals, trans people, women and anyone else held in suspicion by ‘ordinary folk’.
Trump will be really horrible to immigrants whose plight his class has persecuted and helped impoverished. Americans will have to pay much more for the cars that pollute the atmosphere and pump out GHG emissions because they weren’t be able to buy cheaper, greener Chinese ones. The parasitic rich will be even richer and across America the poor will have to take jobs that keep them poor while all along a rambling senile of man in the White House will say America is great again!
Yossarian
⏭️
Disgusting, but at least they were massively outnumbered by counterprotesters, including the campus pastor, who stood next to them with his own signs
well, clearly a sizeable amount. he just won the election, if you hadn't seen. and the w/c voted for him in large numbers. and we all know the drums he kept banging and can read about what people are saying were important to them.
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
Probably blabbered on for quite long enough, but just to mention two things that've been in my head...
One is that I've been reading Albert Meltzer's autobiography, in that he mentions how in the 1930s Mosley's lot would talk a lot about "Jewish landlords" but when tenants started to organise to take landlords on he ordered the BUF to stay out of it to avoid offending his impeccably Anglo landlord friends, and that led to a collapse of their credibility. And the conditions of the 1930s aren't the same as today, but in terms of a starting point, that seems like as good a place as any to think about drawing a line.
Second, I was listening to an interview a few weeks back with North Carolina anarchists who were involved in organising mutual aid efforts after the hurricane and floods. I'm sure many of their neighbours will have been Trump supporters, of various levels of bigotry. And I'm not saying that them doing that is going to solve all social problems in NC or anything, but I do think that, when someone's helped you cope through the aftermath of a massive disaster, you're probably going to take their opinions a bit more seriously. This is all a bit of an abstract conversation because most of us don't live in the US so we're not gonna be doing much of anything practical, but, idk, I think there's something there.
One is that I've been reading Albert Meltzer's autobiography, in that he mentions how in the 1930s Mosley's lot would talk a lot about "Jewish landlords" but when tenants started to organise to take landlords on he ordered the BUF to stay out of it to avoid offending his impeccably Anglo landlord friends, and that led to a collapse of their credibility. And the conditions of the 1930s aren't the same as today, but in terms of a starting point, that seems like as good a place as any to think about drawing a line.
Second, I was listening to an interview a few weeks back with North Carolina anarchists who were involved in organising mutual aid efforts after the hurricane and floods. I'm sure many of their neighbours will have been Trump supporters, of various levels of bigotry. And I'm not saying that them doing that is going to solve all social problems in NC or anything, but I do think that, when someone's helped you cope through the aftermath of a massive disaster, you're probably going to take their opinions a bit more seriously. This is all a bit of an abstract conversation because most of us don't live in the US so we're not gonna be doing much of anything practical, but, idk, I think there's something there.
Doctor Carrot
Marxist Henchman
They were struggling with the cost of toothpaste, though.
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