this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2025
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electoralism
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I critically supported him. Shitting on Cuba and Venezuela is a red line, so I don’t critically support him anymore. Pretending like half of hexbear are secret demsocs is an unfair characterization though.
Edit: I critically supported him because I saw him as helping to develop class consciousness without YET crossing any red lines. Sure, I suspected he could disappoint in the future but I believe and still maintain it’s ok to hold cautious optimism (and be ready for disappointment) instead of just assuming we’ll get fucked over as if it’s a given.
Edit 2: My position is that there are some positions, though correct, are positions that a US politician simply cannot take in public. I don’t like it but I accept it. Talking positively about Stalin, for example. Zohran’s comments about Oct 7 were right on that edge, IMO. But shitting on Cuba, come on. Cuba is like one of the safest ones to support. And shitting on Maduro is actively harmful rn
Yepppppp. He's literally just male AOC now. He has the exact same god damn positions.
one succ congresswoman has no power, a succ mayor can materially improve the lives of his constituents. he might become Obama, it depends how much he straight up lied about trying to do, but if the rent freeze and stuff come through then he's still better than all of them. and my criteria here is him not even making the machine stop him but just preemptively giving up like obama didn't try to codify Roe despite campaigning on it.
Successful socdem policy without laundering people leftwards by defending AES is actively harmful to socialism. It reduces the possibility of socialism occurring in the US and it reduces the support for socialism outside the US.
It is social chauvinism and reinforces capitalism rather than weakening it. Does it improve lives? Yes. Does it help socialism? Absolutely the opposite. Obviously we can not and should not oppose good policy that will help workers (accelerationism) but we should loudly criticise him for this position as harmful to socialists.
reinforcing capitalism is nearly every
politician isn't it?
he's not and never positioned himself as the revolution, but a rent freeze and city grocery stores are incredibly radical for american politics.
Sure but I'm not going to do anything except give him shit and criticism now. Being good for a liberal is still being a liberal.
of course. he was never the revolution and all this "fell for it" shit doesn't scan for me because we all knew he was a lib
I didn't. I've defended him.
the democratic party is a big tent, from rent freezes and medicare for all to genocide and "reaching across the aisle" to people they called nazis a week ago.
There absolutely were a set of Defenders who were fighting against criticism, claiming that he was actually great and principled and that the warning signs were strategic steps back or something of the sort. I agree that it wasn't very fruitful to just complain about him, but the apologetics were very frustrating and now obviously incorrect
we're not 'just complaining' about him. We are admonishing and correcting our incorrect "comrades" here who repeatedly pursue failed tactics and dead end strategies, and pervert and distort marxism in their quest to do so. We wouldn't hammer on the succs this hard if people didn't double down with succ ideology and just stopped being this way
Why is it so hard for the reformists and chauvinists to just admit they're wrong and move onto more principled methods and positions? Why do they have to cling to this shit so hard? Why do they put their backs to the opportunists who betray us, while placing their front to us? Don't they realize that makes them appear to us as our enemies?
I was of the opinion after the first few struggle sessions that we were pretty much out of things to criticize for now and just had to hold out til more dropped or the campaign was done. He was either a shitlib or not, and people had already drawn their lines in the sand with the evidence on hand. Recently more compelling evidence has come out that shitlibness is confirmed so I think this is a convo worth having again.
it's irrelevant what his "true power level" is. The entire strategy of using the DSA to endorse democrats and opportunists is a dead end failure. It's like saying "let's hold out to see this yeast's true rising power" while making your bread with just water and yeast. You're doing the process wrong, you're missing ingredients, the "true yeastiness" is irrelevant.
I know his true power level is irrelevant, people that think it is were going to continue to do so though until the failure of the methods were made apparent.
Using your bread example, you've pointed out that they are missing ingredients, they deny that is a relevant factor. You are essentially arguing with a brick wall at that point until the bread doesn't rise. The initial comment was made, and it is useful to remind them when the bread that should've rose has not, but before that they'll just say, "This bread will rise."
With the bread not rising, some will reasonably realize they are using a failed recipe book. Should the fact there is evidence the recipe is failed before something that should be enough, yes? But if they were listening to that, they wouldn't be insisting it will rise at all. If they didn't know at all and were open to reason without having to watch it fail real time, the moment you said they were missing ingredients, they would have asked what you meant and would adjust what they believed, meaning the reiteration is unneeded because this group would already convert after the initial providing that trying to make bread this way failed every other time.
No all they learn is that this one batch of yeast was flawed, not yeasty enough, and go back to try it again with a new batch of yeast. Forever.
Then no need to argue with them at all because its pointless to try to make them a baker.
???
i'm just japing. some small percentage of them will grow out of it, they just need to be given a kick on the butt. It only seems eternal because there's always new children coming of age who haven't learned how politics works yet
Gotcha, I was really confused for a minute, actually sat there for like 5 minutes with paper trying to see what I was missing trying to square the circle. Most the Mamdani stans I know were literally too young for Obama, Bernie, and AOC, and no one reads Lenin (I'm only being slightly hyperbolic) so basically aren't going to learn this lesson until they're smacked in the face with it.
my anger is more directed at the power users (some are mods) here who repeat this shit over and over, and I know they know better. They've been on this website for 6 years, and the CTH subreddit before that. They're like 30+ years old at this point surely. That is the stubborn stone that will not move. I don't know what you do with these kinds of people. They see the repeated betrayals and failures and just keep doing it while being smug.
I think it's fundamentally a class thing. These people are too comfy and treated up.
Should've seen the EMPOC Zionism struggle sessions, there are some brainworms which there is no desire to fully rectify and no ability to compulsively change. I've resorted to broad snide comments since I generally enjoy the site, but there are certain things that I just accept are unlikely to change.
Oh I agree with you, there are many doing much better than just complaining about him, by writing useful critiques and suggesting better methods. I just mean that only complaining isn't useful. And so when a Mamdani-fan said to complainers 'your complaining is useless,' I agreed. But the apologetics when someone was doing good analyses and critiques was frustrating and now clearly incorrect.
his geopolitics can suck, he's running for mayor. It's disappointing and we certainly shouldn't lionize the guy but if he actually does a rent freeze he's automatically better than 99% of liberal politicians and that would be a material improvement in the lives of thousands of people. I don't see a mechanism where the effort that went into the campaign could cause a rent freeze in a more principled manner, at some point you're interacting with an elected official you might as well have one that promised to do it.
no. this chauvinist apologism needs to end. he's calling for war. he's no better than any american politician, and if americans are willing to sell out the global south and kill them all for some rent freezes then I wish infinite high rents on American chauvinists.
The primary contradiction is imperialism, not rent freezes. Until Americans figure this out they will keep betraying the global working class.
i think it is difficult for someone barely surviving to concern themselves with issues that do not directly affect them. reactionary thought breeds in precarity. if you've got some realistic way to address both at once and help a similar amount of people with the same immediacy then you know some secret techniques i don't.
fuck mamdani but fuck everybody else in his position more.
except the most poor people aren't involved in politics. Electoral Politics is the realm of the middle class, the educated, the comfortable. Social Democrats don't appeal to the poorest, they appeal to the middle class.
the proposed rent freeze applies to units owned by the city, who is living in those? who would benefit from a broader political movement putting pressure on landlords?
I'll cosign everything you said here o7
you are during election season. Then once that's over and the high tide of American chauvinism recedes it's more like 10% instead of 50%. The never ending cycle of westoidism