Only if you try to swallow them whole.

Liberals cosplaying as leftist is more dangerous to the left than any fascist.

So-called “conservatives” are just fundamentalist liberals.

Yeah… the downvotes tells me that USians are still really sore about experiencing a teensy bit of the mechanised slughter they routinely visit upon others.

we dont need people to repeat our ideas we need people to think for themselves

Great! So what’s the very first obstacle we can tackle that prevents people from doing just that?

The foundations of the dominant ideology we are drenched in from birth, perhaps?

But never mind that… I think this conversation has reached deadlock. I have pointed out the weakest spot in the enemy’s ideological armour - there is no point in me wasting energy and focus arguing with those who has no intention of trying to exploit it.

Good luck and good bye.

He was literally a liberal strawman of an anarchist in that movie… so I’d say no.

Oh no!

Anyway…

I understand the sentiment… but the whole reason the US exists is because the US invaded all the places that wasn’t US yet.

However I think in your analysis you are separating capitalism, the economic base, from liberalism, the ideological superstructure.

That’s not my doing. They have already been separated through ideological means - it’s the reason why working class people in the US (for instance) can be convinced that a political establishment that obviously and overtly only represents oligarchic elite interests will, somehow, also end up representing their interests as long as they “vote harder” (or whatever gimmicky party line they come up with next).

The reason elites and alienated workers adhere to liberalism is because it validates lived experiences,

You’re putting the cart before the horse. Liberal narratives bases itself on the lived experience of the working class - or, to be more accurate, liberal narratives bases itself on the lived experience of those elements of the working class whose support it needs to maintain the status quo - not the other way around. Examples are not hard to find - the “bUt wHeRe wIll tHE mOneY cOmE fRoM?!?” (or it’s various variations) gibbering you see liberal economic pundits peddle on tv screens every time somebody proposes building any kind of infrastructure that will benefit the working class is thoroughly based on the mundane, end-of-the-month economic pressures plenty of working class families can identify with. That is why it works so well. In fact, it works so well that it literally becomes self-perpetuating - the working class conflating the economic pressures of working-class economic deprivation with national and even global economics allows the liberal media machine a cornucopia of ways in which to easily justify the machinations of the status quo.

Faced with this kind of enemy, it shouldn’t be that hard for the left to see that leftist ideas of “educating” the working class into radicalism is a stillborn one that is based on romanticised - I would even say magical - thinking… yet it is.

Perhaps you can already tell by now… my background is in propaganda. And the left gets theirs very, VERY wrong.

But if you tell that liberal union member that liberalism is like a fucked up evil ideology,

There’s a very big difference between telling somebody that liberalism is a “fucked up evil ideology,” and simply exposing liberalism as the fundamentally oligarchic ideology it is, always has been and always will be. The former does not explain why Obama promised “Yes We Can!” and then spent his regime-time bailing out corporations with public money while the working class was kicked further into the economic abyss of (so-called) “austerity” - the latter does. With the latter, there simply aren’t too many dots for the average working class person to connect.

but attacking the ideology itself is too abstract, too philosophical, as an approach all on its own.

Since when? The reactionaries are literally attacking ideologies all the damn time - even including liberalism itself when most of the people propagating these narratives qualify as private-property loving liberals themselves! It certainly doesn’t seem too abstract for them, does it now?

Are you suggesting right-wingers are “too philosophical?”

The last person who told me not to use terms like “socialism”

That’s just a purely operational thing. In my experience, any political conversation involves somebody calling me a socialist or a communist five minutes in - my response is usually just, “And what if I am?” and then I carry on regardless.

and many socialists start out as progressive liberals

Yeah… and it shows. The “kid glove” treatment liberalism gets from the left shows. And the working class notices it as well. Working class people all over the world loved watching Richard Spencer getting punched by an antifascist - they literally swoon over Luigi Mangione. Yet, despite all this, the working class has as little confidence in the left as ever.

Why is that?

The “liberals” I was referring to are more like other working class normies, not thought leaders.

If we are going to go forward with this, we will have to agree to draw a sharp distinction between members of the working class whose heads have been filled with liberal propaganda from birth - which, to a higher or lesser degree, essentially includes all of us who grew up in the liberal world - and true liberals who fetishize the “correctness” of their private domination over the means of production (and unspoken but de facto domination over the working class who makes all the production happen) because the key to their power and privilege is enshrined in the core tenet of liberalism itself (that’s tenet - singular - because they only really need one).

Now, you can call these liberal elites capitalists if you wish (and if you really want to creep a working class normie out, you can use the term “bourgeoisie”), but remember… separating the capitalist from his chosen ideology - which is liberalism, not capitalism - has done more to hinder the left than it has helped. In fact, it has allowed liberal media to essentially immunise the working class against anyone who even uses the term “capitalist” in their narratives.

You can test this for yourself. Ask most working class people what a “liberal” is, and most of them will get it half-right (very few will describe Donald Trump, for instance, as a liberal - though, to be fair, plenty of leftists fails to recognise that as well). Ask them what a “capitalist” is and… well, all bets are off. Most people I talk to thinks it’s somebody who works in finance.

That is how the left has missed the boat on liberalism - by separating the capitalist from liberal ideology, the left has disempowered itself and the wider working class from even recognising liberal political machinations to protect the liberal status quo for what they are.

It has made the left politically clumsy.

I’d say you are anti theory from your comments

Not really. I just think that leftists should perhaps double-check said theory before deciding that it’s the working class’ fault for not embracing them.

But i think there is advantages to being openly socialist,

Perhaps it’s because I’m an old… but I just don’t feel the need to wear a political “brand” as part of my identity. Besides… I have zero tolerance for purity testing.

you dont think reactionaries are wrong about liberals?

I think there is a deap-seated (and thoroughly justified) disaffection with liberal elites amongst the working class - and this disaffection is, with good reason, not just limited to those who can be strictly classified as capitalists. It is the liberal elite themselves which have harnassed this disaffection - at the end of the day, all reactionary politics is designed to protect the status quo.

The dilemma for the liberal elite is not complicated - manage the working class by tossing more crumbs from the table (so-called “progresive” liberals) or manage the working class through greater repression (whom I call fundamentalist liberals). The carrot or the stick. This is why you see the fundamentalist liberals roiling up those elements of the working class that have already been prepared and empowered to violently repress the wider working class for the protection of the status quo, and this is why you see progressive liberals constantly giving ground to the fundamentlist ones - the lies (ie, the carrot) is becoming less and less effective. The idea that Donald Trump is a fascist is a ludicrous one - the liberal does not do the dirty work of protecting their ill-gotten private property themselves and wouldn’t know how to do so if their lives depended on it. They outsource that to the hencherproletariat - actual fascism, which is always a working class phenomenon. There’s a good reason why you don’t see the rich sending their children off to become cops.

do you reject communism?

Yes. The concept is far too esoteric for my liking.

we

Sorry to hear about your multiple personality disorder, okay?

You don’t need to come in so hot.

Fine. I’ll quit with the “coming in hot.”

Okay?

You dont talk like any leftists I’ve ever met, so its really hard to determine where you are coming from.

That’s because my political label is working-class normie - not “socialist” or “anarchist” or whatever.

And for idealism and ideology, these are complicated concepts and I dont think we are on the same page as to their meaning.

Ideologies are not complicated things at all. At their core they all come down to a very simple thing - who it is that must be protected by power and who it is that must be exploited by it. Everything else is simply fluff that (at best) play a supportive role. Take the liberal fetishisation of “law & order,” for instance - despite this fetishisation it is absolutely not central to liberal ideology at all. It is merely a structural characteristic of liberal ideology -a necessary aspect to facilitate the necessary violence that keeps the working class where liberal elites (the people leftists insist on calling the “bourgeoisie” because… reasons) wants them to be.

This is what the quote up there refers to.

As for 1919 I have no clue what you are referring to.

The Spartacist uprising - you know, that whole thing.

The way you talk about liberals is not qualitatively different from how reactionaries describe liberals.

Yes - because that is how leftists should have been talking about liberalism right from the start.

I don’t know any main stream media leftist pundits,

Neither do I, so I have no idea what point you are trying to make.

Are these accurate assessments of your positions?

Wow… you got all that despite my (alleged) “obtuseness”?

The main problem with liberals is their idealism,

So it’s not the ideology they cling to that dictates that the private owners of the means of production must de facto form the elite classes of society that must be protected and enabled by power while those who do not must be exploited and repressed by it?

It’s just their (alleged) “idealism”?

but their hearts are leftist.

So you ascribe to the “liberals are just misguided leftists who haven’t read enough of my favorite Beardy McDeadguy’s holy texts” school of leftist magical thinking.

Do tell… how has that been working out for the left since 1919? You know, that year when liberals first overtly took hands with fascists and enabled them to crush a leftist uprising?

What is PhotoGimp?

Really? Then why did the left allow literal liberals to hijack and own liberal hatred?

Fundamentalist liberals (ie, the people who call themselves “conservatives” these days) and their working-class allies (ie, fascists) spewing hatred for liberalism is literally a trope - not so with leftists, who never misses the opportunity to alienate the working class by using the term “bourgeoisie” when the term liberal would suffice perfectly.

How many leftists do you know that, when given the opportunity to explain their politics, starts their narratives with liberalism - you know, the ideological justification for the private ownership over the means of production that the working class is already familiar with because fundamentalist liberals who calls themselves “conservatives” can’t stop whining about it - and work their way backwards to it’s (actually quite obvious) connections to capitalism and fascism?

Or do all the leftist pundits you know simply start regurgitating the same narratives leftist elites from a hundred years ago used - you know, those narratives that the modern working class has been thoroughly immunised against by decades of liberal media?

In the case of GIMP it’s an interface that makes any kind of sense. Have to admit that Inkscape is looking pretty damn good these days - even though it’s not really a replacement for Illustrator and is more a good replacement for progs like Freehand and Coreldraw.

Liberalism is a fundamentally oligarchic ideology.

It’s central tenet holds that those who privately own everything must be protected by the law but not bound by it, while those who do not must be bound by the law but not protected by it.

It’s truly sad that the left has completely missed the boat when it comes to liberalism.

Yawn.

Not just lazy - boring, too.