Lol, that’s not how things work at all, at least here in the US. They’d just say they fired you for an unrelated reason. And if you took it to court, good luck affording a lawyer that can compete with their team, while being unemployed. Extremely unlikely that the little guy wins there.

Actual clip of this user

Because then they fire you.

More personal attacks, because it’s all you’ve got. Funny how I’m the one criticizing civility fetishism but I’ve been considerably more civil this conversation than you have. Maybe you should try practicing what you preach.

Also funny that you think you understand Marx, who famously called for, “Ruthless criticism of everything that exists” as if Karl Marx would be clutching pearls over me calling out Jonathan Haidt.

What is now happening to Marx’s theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. 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. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now “Marxists” (don’t laugh!).

Absent your attempts to make it insulting and pathological, that’s called passionately opposing injustice. Being dispassionate is not inherently more “sane” or “reasonable,” having emotions is human and some things should provoke emotional reactions.

But of course, in reality, my response was quite calm and well reasoned, presenting plenty of evidence to support my points. You’re the one who can’t keep pace with that and have to resort to these petty insults in an attempt to discredit me, because you’re incapable of a logical response.

Are you saying that in an attempt to insult/discredit me in some way? Yes, I’m neurodivergent, and proud of it. I’m also correct on the points I made (save for mixing up Haidt and Chait, as I owned up to).

When you can’t refute any of the other person’s points, just call them crazy 🙄

Seems like you’re contributing to hostile online discourse with all these insults you keep hurling at me. I’m just trying to have a conversation.

It really is.

If a USian realizes that the US government is shit, they conclude that all governments, currently existing or even theoretically possible, must also be shit. Because obviously “America is #1” so if “even” our government is bad then imagine how bad governments in other countries must be. This chauvinism cuts across a lot of cultural/political lines, radlibs aren’t aware that they have that bias so they don’t question or correct for it.

Jesus christ, it’s like you read the headline and desperately wanted to provide supporting evidence.

Well, yes. First off because it’s funny. Several other people in the thread thought so and made the same joke.

But also, yes, because I despise civility fetishism, and I also despise Haidt for being a transphobic shitlib. And obviously, the two are connected, the reason Haidt is whining about civility is that he got bullied on Twitter for his transphobia and he wants to be able to shit on trans people without suffering any kind of social reprecussions.

It’s funny how you baselessly assert “this has absolutely nothing to do with trans rights” as if just saying it somehow makes it true, like some kind of magic spell. I wonder, would you say the same thing if it was a more prominent transphobe like JK Rowling calling out hostility in internet discourse? What if it was someone like, say, Charlie Kirk, or even Richard Spencer? Are you a true civility fetishist who takes issue with bullying bigots, or is it that you’re only ok with bigotry when it’s directed towards trans people? Idk, seems worth investigating.

But, you know, maybe civility fetishism isn’t so bad. Maybe it’s me who’s wrong, I’m just a crazy radical, and I need to be more like MLK.

First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”

Huh, kinda seems like he saw tension disrupting the peace as being necessary towards pushing towards justice in equality in an unjust status quo. But maybe MLK is too radical too. You know who I need to be more like? Jesus. That’s right, I’m turning over a new leaf and I’ve decided to be more Christlike.

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

Huh. Kinda seems like even Jesus agreed that social change necessarily involved creating conflict, or bringing conflicts to the forefront, in order to address injustice.

But ok, let’s ignore them (maybe the world would just be a better place if assholes like them would shut up some times and stop blasting their toxicity all over the world) and look at the actual, present day reality. When exactly was internet discourse supposedly more civil? Let’s compare to, say, 10 years ago, 2015. Before #MeToo so you don’t have to worry about women calling people out for sexual assault and causing division, but it’s also in the middle of Gamergate, so you know, really not a great time to be a woman on the internet, but I guess if you were a cishet white man, things were pretty peaceful and harmonious. You also didn’t have a bunch of people calling out the bombs going to the Middle East, of course, we were still bombing civilians en masse, but I guess if you were a cishet white man, things were pretty peaceful and harmonious.

You know when discourse was really at it’s peak? The 1950’s. Before all these radicals started calling for civil rights or spreading division against things like bombing Vietnam or Korea, just an all around wonderful time, a Leave it to Beaver paradise, you know, just so long as you’re a cishet white man.

At some point, obviously, you have to draw the line. And I’ve simply drawn it a little bit further than you have.

Jonathan Haidt recently wrote in The Atlantic:

Ok but fr tho fuck Jonathan Haidt.

Haidt was JAQing off about trans people in the exact way that the Onion called out and satirized hours after their article was published. He’s a “centrist” who seems to exclusively punch left, and he’s just whining about getting called out with legitimate criticism.

He also got deez nuts’d iirc lol.

Edit: Shit, I had him confused with another Atlantic writer, Jonathan Chait. My bad. Haidt is also a left-punching transphobic “centrist” tho.

I will personally execute one hostage vote every hour four years until they give in to my demands. Lmk when the democrats come to the table with a serious offer, then we’ll talk.

I find the last days of the Qing dynasty China to be somewhat analogous. Institutional rot, rampant corruption, a complete failure to adapt to crises and open hostility to anyone proposing workable solutions or trying to learn from foreign examples. Basically the two voices in government were, “Learn how guns work while completely refusing to understand the scientific principles that allowed them to be developed” and “Learn absolutely nothing.” The “lesser evil” was woefully inadequate, and once the government finally collapsed, both factions that emerged (communists and nationalist) were far more influenced by Western ideas than even the most radical in the Qing government were.

Not only that, the reason there were Japanese soldiers in mainland China in the first place is because Stalin moved them there with his giant spoon.

This is such a tremendously awful take. The Sino-Japanese war happened because the Japanese attacked, and they attacked because they were beligerant, expansionist fascists. Stalin did not make decisions for the Japanese, nor did Chiang Kai-Shek, nor did Zhang Zhizhong. The Chinese decision to retaliate against Japanese aggression was completely necessary, and if anything we should criticize the KMT for being too hesitant and patient about it. There is no alt-history where China rolls over and Japan stops at Manchuria in the same way that there is no alt-history where Hitler stops at Poland.

All you did was barf on your keyboard, it’s not worth a response.

Please fuck off back to Reddit or 4chan or wherever you came from. We don’t want your kind here.

God forbid women have hobbies 🙄

Blah blah blah. The Nazis started by coming after trans people too, gay people wound up in camps all the same. Divide and conquer, you’re not as clever with this BS as you think.

Most of the regimes you support are the result of military coups of actual revolutions.

Really? Which ones, specifically? I’m not aware of any like that.

Why support the genocides or the oppression of workers?

I don’t.

Still doesn’t make it socialism.

If you want to write off the whole history of socialist theory as well as every revolution that called itself socialist as having nothing to do with socialism, then I might suggest that you’re the one who should find another name for whatever it is you believe. Marx and Engles were socialists. Lenin was a socialist. Ho Chi Minh was a socialist. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were socialists. They identified as such, acknowledged each other as such (when possible chronologically), and are widely seen as such. But I guess you personally are the ultimate authority on who is and isn’t a socialist, and I just need to DM you whenever I have any questions about that.

Who exactly is a socialist in your mind, anyway? Any actual human being you can name, aside from yourself?

In practice, it’s the opposite. You want to spend all the effort of revolution just to end up with more oppression because you get overthrown by CIA-backed fascists.

So, as I assumed, no answer to the Mossadegh problem.

Nowhere in that comment did I assume that you’re against revolutions. You’re in favor of them, as you said. A bit too in favor of them, tbh. You seem to think revolutions are trivial matters, that if the gains of a revolution are lost, you can simply do it again. If you’re not prepared to commit to whatever’s necessary to win and secure those gains, you’re probably better off not doing it at all.

Nothing I’ve said is remotely disingenuous. You’ve just decided you hate me because of memes and meme ideologies. If you’re attempting to demonstrate the importance of theory through this silly display of ignorance and infighting, you’re doing a good job of it.

People become “tankies” because they take these questions seriously and study them. You can’t understand it because you don’t, and haven’t. Your ideology (whatever it is) wasn’t chosen because of a rigorous study of history and theory, but because it looks nice. It’s fun to denounce people as authoritarians, makes you feel good, whatever. But you don’t actually have reason or evidence to back up your position, you’re not interested in engaging with such historical or theoretical questions at all. None of you are, really. It’s all just memes and yet you have this bizarre, misplaced confidence, that because your catchphrases sound nice it means your ideology works.

and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists.

I must correct my previous statement.

Socialism is when you violently overthrow the bourgeoisie, then immediately allow yourself to be overthrown by a fascist counter-revolution in which everyone on the left is exterminated, because you’re too afraid of your own shadow to stop them.

Tell me, what are your thoughts on Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran? A progressive leader who came to power through a peaceful, popular movement against British colonialism, nationalized the oil industry and reclaimed it’s profits for the benefit of the common people, and then, as the CIA began infiltrating the country, refused to implement any “authoritarian” measures, leading to his overthrow? Leading to the installation of the shah who hunted down and exterminated any and all leftists in the country with his secret police? Leading to generations of Iranians living their entire lives under far-right governments, with no end in sight?

There’s a reason why existing socialist governments are willing to employ authoritarian methods, it’s called “survivorship bias,” as in, all the movements that were too averse to such methods were subverted and exterminated.

Honestly, I find your position less coherent and less respectable than outright liberalism. If you’re serious about revolution, then you have to be prepared for what that entails and you have to understand the life-or-death stakes. If you blow it, not only will everyone involved be killed, but the example will live on and the next opportunity might not arise for another 100 years or more. You are playing with powerful forces, and failure is not an option. It’s necessary to adapt to the situation and use whatever methods are most effective, whether those methods are “authoritarian” or not.

What you want to do is to try to fight the vastly superior foe of capitalism, but before you even start, you want to put on a blindfold and tie one hand behind your back. You want to win in the “right” way, the way that makes you feel good. You’re trying to play games, but the other side does not fuck around.

Of course, I assume you don’t have thoughts on Mossadegh because I assume you haven’t actually studied historical examples to inform your views, nor actual theory. My views are not something I was born with or that were just naturally appealing to me, it’s only after studying such things and seriously considering them that I arrived here. In a world where leaders like Mossadegh didn’t get overthrown, I wouldn’t hold the views I do, unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in. I’d rather survive, win, and deliver on material improvements, rather than be an aspiring martyr.