I’m curious what the general consensus is here cause I am so so fucking tired of listening to people talk about Graham Platner.
I’m amenable to the possibility of him being decent but I am not holding my breath over it.
it’s just another perfect example of the inherent flaws in “the left” ever hitching its wagon to the fucking Democratic Party.
That phrase “the left” makes my skin crawl in general. I am so tired of having to constantly wrest the identity of a historic movement away from this or that charlatan, it is humiliating to me and my peers to invest faith and trust in these people.
But without a party, who can we say represents “the left”? With the crimes of chattel slavery and now Palestinian genocide, is this party really the vehicle?
As far as I’m concerned any Democratic politician has a massive bar to clear for any support from me. More importantly I think we can point to some disturbingly clear examples that the institutional forces of Democratic Party politics easily overawing any individual representative of “the left”
I don’t like to disparage people choosing optimism in general. It just seems so glaringly obvious that without an enforcement mechanism outside of the Democratic Party there is very little to create any kind of actual accountability and there is nothing but unlimited reward for participation and substance-less posturing.
Wonder what the PSL is up to! Wish them nothing but good things.
Curious where everyone is besides sick of this. WHO gives a fuck! It’s Maine! Hardly anyone lives there! Have you ever seen a black fly? Too scary in general this is just par for the course
Platner is kind of the perfect embodiment of the Left’s issue with the state of electoralism in this country.
He’s very obviously the lesser evil compared to Collins. And you can even make a strategic voting argument that him winning might actually be a catalyst towards moving the Dems in a direction that materially improves people’s live. But not enough to fix any fundamental problems, so of course the fascists will take back power again in a few years and undo all that and march us further down the path to Fourth Reichdom.
…and the price you pay for that is you’ve gotta vote for the unrepentant war criminal.
Oh, and there’s like a 80/20 chance that he’s just a disingenuous ghoul, or will simply be assimilated into the Dem blob. I honestly think we’re going to look back a few years and wonder why in the hell we cared about this guy at all.
Couldn’t agree more
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he’s a butcher. nothing else really matters. i don’t care if he promises the sky and all the stars in it, he massacred innocent people for fun. the only discussion that should be had about people like platner is “pit or rope?”
I mean, it’s rope, right? I’m not fucking digging that shit. Come on now.
Imagine the smell of fascists roasting at 180c down there, eww.
You’re supposed to make him dig the pit at gunpoint
Yeah I respect this argument and I truly don’t bother articulating it for my own mental health more than anything else. Maybe he’ll surprise us all!
Big heaping helping of doubt on that unfortunately. That’s the Democrats for you! Thugs and crooks all the way down with a few nice guys to grease the wheels. Kinda like a mafia in that sense!
It’s like trying to win a revolution by reforming the mafia from the inside.
it’s just another perfect example of the inherent flaws in “the left” ever hitching its wagon to the fucking Democratic Party.
It sounds like people just didn’t understand what made 2016-era Sanders special. People liked 2016-era Sanders because he wasn’t a card-carrying Democrat. He was just some dude with a history of progressive politics who only went through the motions of being a DINO in an attempt to steal the Democratic nomination from Clinton in the primaries. That’s why people liked Sanders. People said similar things about Trump. That’s the whole deal about Trump taking the Republican nomination from the “cuckservatives” like Jeb! and Ted Cruz.
AOC, Mamdani, et al are a regression for the very simple reason that they are sincere members of the Democratic Party. Unlike 2016-era Sanders (or more accurately, people’s false impression of Sanders during 2016 when they thought Sanders would form his own party after losing the nomination instead of bending the knee), they are not there to undermine the Democratic Party. Even without getting into how they fall short from a socialist perspective, they don’t even challenge the duopoly in any meaningful sense nor do they try to advocate around progressive causes like abolishing the electoral college.
Here’s hoping a charismatic person who’s totally not affiliated with PSL would crash the 2028 Democratic primaries in order to steal the nomination from Gruesome Newsome.
The fact is running in the Democrat Primary is absolutely an unavoidable tactic that every leftist/socialist must embrace if they want to actually hold officr. Its functionally nothing more than a preliminary runoff election. But after that you must maintain a strong “fuck the DNC” attitude. Do not seek party endorsements. Embrace any “not a real democrat” label. And for the love of all that’s holy, do not even think about touching ActBlue or NGPVan. Squat that (D).
That’s such an excellent point and it had completely escaped me but you’re absolutely right.
Bernie Sanders had more of a proven record of antagonizing the Democratic Party establishment than anyone who’s come to represent “the left” since.
My greatest fear is that the momentum of “the left” whatever the fuck that means is captured, redirected and squandered by the Democrats because historically that is just what they do! And now the narrative become ““the left” has been tried and is a dead letter” to a whole generation who come afterwards.
You know how Lenin said how you should only participate in bourgeois elections to the extent where you can show to the working class how much of a sham bourgeois elections are. That was basically Sanders’ run in 2016. There was a certain level of audacity, which still make Hilldawg stans seethe to this very day, of some dude who had never once registered as a Democrat strolling up to the Democratic primaries and giving the presumptive career Democrat nominee a run for her money. AOC sucking up to Pelosi look completely pathetic in comparison.
Sanders fucked up/revealed himself to be a sheepdog in disguise by not channeling that anger and outrage over getting ratfucked towards forming his own party. Most post-Sanders electoralists are essentially arguing that Sanders failed because he was an independent instead of a Democrat and that had he been a Democrat, he would’ve won the primaries against Clinton somehow. In fact, the opposite would be true: had Sanders been a Democrat, he would’ve ate shit even harder because a lot of people only liked Sanders because he wasn’t a loser Democrat like Clinton.
Exactly! The comparison to Trump and Sanders is very important, because at the time they both represented a break from the norms of the existing parties. When Sanders failed to capture the anger after being sandbagged by the Democrats he actually seeded a bunch of voters TO Trump because now HE was proven to be the OUTSIDER who could actually fucking win. There is a whole stratum of people who saw Sanders loose and then Trump scoop the win, who went “Aw hell yeah, Trump is daddy now!”.
Had Sanders captured that energy, by announcing a grassroots working class party, god only knows how history would have gone.
Had Sanders captured that energy, by announcing a grassroots working class party, god only knows how history would have gone.
My idea is that:
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ML parties like PSL will have less members since many people would’ve joined Sander’s party instead.
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The DSA would probably be a defunct org since given the choices between Sander’s party and more radical parties like the PSL, why would anyone hitch their wagon with the DSA? In many ways, the DSA is (poorly) filling the void that should’ve been filled by Sander’s party.
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I think a lot of the current crop of so-called progressives like AOC would either not have political careers or simply run as generic Democrats without any hint of progressivism. What would AOC’s political career even look like? Would she join Sander’s party or would she just be some generic Democrat? Much of the online arguments and struggle sessions over whether so and so is legit or controlled opposition would not exist or look very different. Perhaps people will accuse alt-history AOCIA or alt-history Mamdani of joining Sander’s party to undermine it from within.
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Most of the leftist influencer space would have less obnoxious politics since instead of glazing the Democrats and coming up with excuses for their failures, they would be glazing Sander’s party (and coming up with excuses for their failures) instead.
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Sander’s party would be at the crossroads after al-Aqsa Flood when Sander goes completely mask off as an unrepentant Zionist. I do not think Sanders can control the anti-Zionism that almost everyone within the party would believe in, but what happens to the party is anybody’s guess. Maybe there would be a mass exodus of members which causes the party to collapse. Maybe Sanders would be expelled from the party for being a Zionist piece of shit. Hell, maybe the bourgeoisie moves to crush the party through the security apparatus.
There’s a timeline where Sander’s party develops their politics well beyond Sanders to the point of expelling him for being a reactionary and eventually merging with PSL.
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i thought mamdani was dsa and ran for the dem primary for new york reasons
The point is that Mamdani’s still a registered member of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, Sanders went back to being an independent as soon as the primaries ended. The fact that AOC et al are all members of the Democratic Party means that at best, they thought Sanders being an independent was the main reason why he got ratfucked in both 2016 and 2020. But everyone knows that Sanders didn’t fail because he had an “I” after his name instead of a “D” on C-Span, so why aren’t more of these so-called progressives and socialists following in Sander’s footsteps by being third party/independent?
Mamdani being a member of dsa is largely coincidental and arbitrary. He was backed by the Fight initiative like Fetterman and Platner.
The guy went on multiple tours in Iraq and then as a blackwater mercenary in afghanistan. He defended people getting SS runes tattooed[1], he devised a way to keep shelling dense urban areas without getting detected after it got forbidden because the murder count got too high even for the US military[2], he wanted to “kill thousands … maybe millions. Our way of life is better and if that is what it takes to prevail, lets get this show on the road”[3]
He has an actual fucking SS tattoo. That should be the end of any discussion.
*had
he got a coverup when people found out about it. if he was really reformed he would’ve not required a scandal for motivation.
being pedantic he still has it just covered up, and covered by something else that still is nazi adjacent
I seem to remember when he covered it there was still two little bottom bits of bone sticking out like an old man’s balls hanging out of his shorts
I hope he pays for his crimes, and I swear “the left” is just shorthand for losers who will suck up to the Democrats because “no movement we are just smol beans we have to play the game with what we have
”He’s an Obvious Plant who will no doubt be the next
/ Fetterman. He will most likely have a staffer incident (womanizer violent Nazi) if not an outright Nazi / imperalist carrer despite pinky swearing he’s a changed man.the problem with Platner is that if he gets away with this shit the democratic party can practically get Donald Trump as the “progressive candidate” for some state. Western politics are a sham, shamelessly no standards
That’s a great point actually cause I guarantee the next Graham Platner guy they try and run will be an actually bloodthirsty chud
this guy is already a bloodthirsty chud
Trueeee true true
Also sick of hearing about the nazi mercenary shit bag that is just going to be another Fetterman and rest of the war criminals at the senate
Most likely outcome truly
The present moment in “left politics” in America is driving me insane. I had thought that the people who constituted the mainstream of what could be called ‘the left’ were starting to clue in to the fact that the Democrats are without any shadow of a doubt the Enemy and can’t be relied upon for anything other than backstabbing, but watching the people who have stood up to bat for Platner has made me feel like the last 10 years have been collectively forgotten, or never mattered
hasan wouldnt have his gigantic platform on twitch dot tv if he were genuinely radical. same for the rest of the “mainstream left”. that’s what it all comes down to in the end.
I know you’re right, and this is probably naive on my part, but while I knew that Hasan, and by extension, the rest of “DSA” types, were never highly radical, I had gotten my hopes up that if there were anything genuine happening, that there were some genuine learning from lessons happening. Evidently not.
the problem with the current generation of “leftists” is that they don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them. that is, they want to keep imperialism but they don’t like how the spoils are distributed. that means they’ll do stupid shit like align themselves with actual nazis in congress in the hopes that they’ll kill Other People, not them. the obvious problem with that is the ingroup always shrinks and rarely grows. and as capitalism grows increasingly volatile, the ingroup shrinks more and more often and grows less and less often. the new deal liberals will never learn because the core of their ideology is the maintenance of imperialism but working better for them. it’s the same reason leftist men are so chauvinistic. especially hasan. they hate being oppressed, but they don’t mind being the oppressor. but at least hasan sometimes doesn’t support the worst of the US war machine.
I’m continually surprised that people can ready theory and still look for “the left” in the Dems, and still have room to be repeatedly surprised that it isn’t there. Is it really so shocking that most of our work has not in fact been done for us, and that the ones actually furthering the socialist cause are doing so in relative obscurity? If the algorithm brings something or someone to my attention, I find it’s a sound policy assume it’s hostile until proven otherwise.
I don’t think anyone who has read even a little marxist theory is supporting platner.
you’d be surprised… A lot of people don’t actually engage with a text as a whole and instead just read sentence by sentence. They then piece it back together from what they remember reading after.
he makes “the left” look bad because he’s a war criminal who wants to renationalize military production to make it more efficient but in reality i spend way too much time thinking about electoral politics for the amount of good it does. i’d be better off talking about reality tv than spending another second talking about graham hitner.
i don’t like him he’s a “kill more efficiently” kind of guy, i think progressives will be disappointed in him. putting that aside though all this discourse only helps his opponent which is guaranteed to be worst. im not a “lesser of two evils” guy, it’s just that republicans keep talking about him and progressive libs keep defending him and people here keep spamming dunks on the libs. it’s all very tiring and it’s not even helping us so why would people keep dunking on progressives is beyond me.
I’m amenable to the possibility of him being decent but I am not holding my breath over it.
That’s pretty much where I’ve landed on him. Rhetorically he says many of the right things, which is more than can be said for Collins, but that bar is so low it’s in hell, where Inshallah she spends eternity.
Honestly? aside from the tattoo i dont have an opinion on him, one way or another. I dont live where folks vote for him, so it really doesnt matter what I think. And because it really doesnt matter, I havent spent any time thinking about him.
On one hand, “dont let perfect be the enemy of good” or fkn whatever. But also, democrat is the moderate wing of fascism. I dunno. But either way, my opinion doesnt matter, so whatever i guess.
he’s literally a war criminal
He’s also proud of his war crimes, thinks he should be better paid for them, and wants to expand the US military (ie, do more imperialism and war crimes). How the fact that he wants to expand the military escapes everyone’s analysis is beyond me.
Yes I understand this. And despite my dislike of it, it changes nothing.
What does me getting hot and bothered do exactly? Raise my blood pressure? Make me a bit more jaded? How much oppositional canvassing am I going to do over 1,000 miles to his south? I’m not wasting my mental outlook on someone I can do nothing about. I am barely holding it together as is.
Getting ultra-pissed over something I can do fuck-all about is a fools errand. I’ll leave it to others.
i dont have an opinion on him, one way or another.
it’s pretty low effort to have an opinion, it’s very marginal effort to cuss out a liberal online. we’re not asking you to kidnap the guy and bring him to iraq or the hague to stand trial.
Ok. Fuck graham platner. Does that make you feel better or something? Be more performative here on the internet if you feel the need.
Saying you don’t have an opinion about Platner on this website is performative, silly
saying “i don’t have an opinion” about a US troop and blackwater mercenary who got a nazi tattoo is an extreme expression of apathy
In fairness the average American proletarian has been beaten down so much that wanting to live is revolutionary optimism.
aside from the tattoo i dont have an opinion on him, one way or another.
bit idea: pretending this refers to your chest tattoo of Graham Platner’s face
There are worse things you could get for a chest tattoo.
I’m in the same boat. Don’t live there, not my circus.
I am happy to see his working class messaging resonating, that is a good thing. I’ll remain hopeful that he helps pull the overton window more to the left. Ultimately I just want my queer kids to not be under direct threat from the government so I will take imperfect allies where I can.
I said this before, but as a non american it is pretty clear that my entire family can be tortured to death and all of my supposed self-proclaimed comrades not only won’t care in the slightest but will actively make sure the perpetrators will gain power and fame while they don’t show a single gram of remorse.
The county where I live is guilty of so many crimes all over the world, but never ever would someone like that murderous freak be able to get a position of power in any party that presents itself on the left but no one in america seems to consider anyone else as human living beings.
So yeah, it’s obvious that any future with the usa is impossible and any political “opposition” only cares about their circle getting healthcare or something lame like that. Utterly cucked, completely complicit and 0 hope for a future.
If this is really the groundwork for americans of being a socialist, then american socialists are my enemy.
I understand where your coming from but you don’t seem too interested in my point of view.
The option in that particular race is someone who enables Trump and those who pull his strings or someone that won’t. An area that is 3,000 miles away from where I live, that’s like the fucking Alantic ocean between me and those voters. What are you reallt expecting from me in this situation? Genuine question.
The kids, not just mine but the vast majority of their peers are way more radicalized than anyone was when I was their age. It is a huge priority for me to help nurture and give context to the world they are growing up in so that we have more people engaged in making changes in this country so that we stop fucking around in other countries.
Working class messaging is when you take pride in massacring members of the working class on behalf of the bourgeoisie 🥴
Me on the other hand I’m happy to see war crime messaging resonating
