Chatters deflated this dude in record time. Weaponizes mental illness and then immediately back peddled saying "you know that's not what I mean". Paints them as monoliths BE fans. Puts a ban out on all BE supporters in the chat for being "parasocial thinkers". Then mopes and pouts for the next 20+ minutes.
I enjoy Hasan, I like the Fear& podcast, but I also see his limitations, and it fully drives me up a wall when he starts dropping "mental illness" derogatorily. Use that college education and find some new fucking words.
Anyway, I don't know much about Graham Platner, but I love this part of his Wikipedia page:
He was pictured holding a sign reading "Free Kosovo, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Kurdistan, Tibet". When he was 18, he was quoted in the Bangor Daily News after protesting President George W. Bush and the Iraq War at an appearance by Bush at Bangor International Airport.[7]
Platner enlisted in the Marine Corps shortly after graduating from high school, and served three tours in Iraq, in areas including Ramadi and Fallujah.
How do you get from "protesting the Iraq war" to "did three tours in Iraq including Fallujah"?
I get it, he's doing the populist thing, but we should be clear that populism isn't socialism by it self. If I have that wrong then maybe Donald Trump is the greatest socialist of our time.
I have more faith in Zohran coming out of the DSA then this guy coming off the oyster boat. I have a funny feeling he won't be met with the same resistance that these DSA candidates are getting hit with. At least there is a chance thr DNC turns on the DSA and forces them to rethink their strategy. There is nothing supporting this guy should he get the same treatment. I don't think he will though. I think the dems like dudes who do 5 tours as an imperial foot soldier and another as a security contractor for the State Department.
This is only true if you think that electing "your guy" is moving towards the left (which a lot of USians and US hexberians seem to think). Electing socialist candidates should be like a tertiary issue at best, but USians cannot comprehend what building a political party / mass movement actually means, and think that everything orbits the election cycle.
sure lol but electing a socialist/leftist/etc candidate is part of moving a part of the political machine leftward and I wouldn't say it is a tertiary issue. You're not wrong that an actually viable political party or movement has to be built from the ground up and sustained by the community as a whole - but that has nothing to do really with someone saying "i am supporting this lib-left candidate because they have a chance at unseating the evangelical conservative in that district and if they win my liberal party will have a majority of votes" even if in reality their preferred party having a majority doesn't guarantee left-of-center legislation/policies.
Org building, community outreach, etc that is required for building a political party or mass movement is pretty meaningless imo if you can't translate that into getting actual legislation written/passed.
I think it is well and good to say "the people will come around to socialism/communism when they encounter the communist running the food bank in their community or the socialist doing free brake light repairs out of their garage" - I will never disagree with that - but I do think, at least in the US, stuff like that will never translate into something like 'universal healthcare' unless you also have some sort of horse in the overall electoral side of the race.
The democrats shouldn’t be your party! A liberal party shouldn’t be your party!! A communist workers party should be your party!!! This is what I’m talking about!
The goal is revolution. I have no idea what you are talking about
No!!! The people will come around to socialism when you have a socialist party to set the agenda! Why is it so hard to imagine an actual workers party?
There's an answer for that: Because the state apparatus and especially its economic masters work in overdrive to discredit and vilify anything that becomes apparent as a communist party, worker's party, internationalist party ("fifth column"), or coherent force against capitalism. This has been going on for longer than a century.
In other countries, you might be able to wave the red flag and get people flocking to you, and you'll have to fend off the NGOs and the coups. In the USA, just for people to join you, they need to get over the massive obstacle of their ideological propagandizing since infancy, and then at the same time, in addition to what exists in other countries, you have the entire mass media demonizing you and spinning everything against you.
For this reason you need to appear limited in your ambitions, or to be subtle and gradual and only reveal your intentions when you are close to being powerful enough to enact them. I'm not saying anyone who has a 10+ year career in the overseas killing machine is worth putting any weight behind. But if there were any way that I would approve of using electoralism to further the movement, it would be running for local executive office under the banner of socialism and a limited platform of making an achievable set of benefits for the working class.