What did your parents think of the Democrats while growing up?

[GenMarshall]

And before you say this is "ganging up" or the like, please do remember that I offered my help without any aggro, very recently.

It honestly feels like A start of a massive dogpile. I recall you made the post and liking it, not sure what happened to the thread (likely locked).

Though the thing is, I’m not sure on which subject to start off at .

 

[Gorbles]

It honestly feels like A start of a massive dogpile. I recall you made the post and liking it, not sure what happened to the thread (likely locked).

Though the thing is, I’m not sure on which subject to start off at .

Send me a PM, if you still want to, and go from there.

To be clear, I agree with NinjaCow here generally. But this stuff isn't personal to me, so it doesn't tax me like it'd understandably tax someone else who always has to justify their existence.

Also, I'm not telling you how to feel, but if a couple of people replying to you feels like the start of a massive dogpile (if I'm reading you right), from personal experience I want to suggest that you should take a step back. Right or wrong doesn't matter at that point. Posting through it isn't going to help what you're feeling.

 

[NinjaCow64]

I can see this is going to personal levels now.

It is pretty clear to me that I was included in who you were talking about. Even then, its hard to not take things personally when you have supported evil people and policies who would have seen me and my friends lives made incredibly worse in recent memory.

I’d would ask other IOTers whom weren’t part of the militant leftist cliques. They cite they were very uncomfortable with the rhetoric that was actively being cultivated there and left because they didint want to deal with the feeling of being unwelcomed. I still recall the statement SouthernKing made when he made that post way back in 2018 and I resonated with his statement and should have been a wake-up call to tone down the rhetoric less you alienate the rest of the community. I can tell you, the “light chiding” was anything but light when you even have center-left people feeling alienated.

SK, as far as I am aware, never supported the Republican Party or started gorging on anti-SJW content because of this. We are not talking about them. Why did your alienation drive you into the arms of the far right when it did not drive other centre-leftists into the arms of the far right?

Celebrated? At most they were criticizing the rioting that happened in the summer of 2020. All I saw were rioting and looting. I know and admit that there are peaceful protests, they aren’t covered as heavily as the riots.

If you missed the support from the Republicans for Derek Chauvin and the blatant character assassination of George Floyd then you weren’t paying attention.

I have a life outside of these boards and engage in hobbies and activities that don’t revolve around politics and a full time job. Do you honestly expect a person to do a 180 turn in under a second? It’s quite unreasonable and unfair to expect someone to make that much of a drastic change in under a second. I’d argue the opposite that a sudden change in under a second make you look insincere in your beliefs.

I will be more specific. It is extremely weird to publicly identify your ideology as “considering becoming a Social Democrat” for over two years. There have been times where I considered changing my ideology, where I was in the process of changing my ideology. I did not public identify as “I am becoming a Communist” or whatever at the time, it was not conscious. One day during this process I realised what I believed and I discarded the old labels that applied to me.

The way you describe your current political beliefs are confusing and nonsensical to me to the point where I cannot trust them due to your previously held opinions.

I am speaking from experience when I was younger, I was chided for being a flip-flopper back in the 2000s in OT.

You still strike me as a flip-flopper. You have not shed that reputation.

Again, change is gradual. Not a snap of the finger instantaneous event you do. There’s a thing called self-reflection that I have been doing for the past years. “Change Gabe’s surroundings and you’ll change Gabe”.

I have watched “How to Radicalise a Normie”, yes.

I’m not sure how much your surroundings have changed though. You are still posting in this nasty little sub forum, liking nasty little posts.

Here is something to self-reflect on - why do you think that people who have been on the receiving end of anti-SJW rhetoric (like myself) react so negatively to someone who insists they are still in the process of deradicalising from the far-right?

I still stand by my statement that I’ve renounced my old anti-SJW beliefs, but don’t expect me to self-flagellate myself, write an essay about it, or annoyingly virtue signal about it.

How can I know you won’t start slipping back, like the numerous times that you said that you had renounced those beliefs and then started saying them again a month later?

That’s very disingenuous to presume that I’d vote for Trump on the basis of your post (especially after I had voiced that I’m considering voting third party 2024) and that your a communist transgender. Again, I have already done self-reflection in regards to the far-right and I have already ruled them to be very authoritarian, which are antithetical to my values for freedom and liberty from the get go.

It is what happened before. You claim that radical Leftism from IOT drove you into the arms of the radical right - what is to stop you from encountering some radical here or some other place that makes you decide that you miss being an anti-SJW and jumping right back into that rabbit hole?

I shouldn’t deny you agency here, ultimately it was your choice to listen to the anti-SJWs in response to what you encountered. Not mine.

Am I going to take away your freedom of speech because you’re a communist? No, because I still value freedom of speech.

As I see it, you’re the passengers that are complaining why we’re not moving when the train just slowly left the station.

How am I meant to be expected to refrain from snide remarks when I receive them in kind?

 

[choxorn]

Hi, one of the blatant militant leftists of Imperium Offtopicum here, quite possibly one of GenMarshall's former friends as well (I don't know if GenMarshall ever considered me a friend, I considered him a friend once).

The fact that light chiding about Social Democrats drove you into the arms of reactionaries who openly want to kill me and many of your other former friends validates every joke that an IOTer has made at the expense of Social Democrats (better known as Social Fascists). The fact that you started simping for the people who openly celebrated the death of George Floyd because black people got a little too upset about that for your liking is utterly shameful.

Okay, honest question because I'm confused now: What's a social democrat, as both of you understand it? I thought it was someone along the lines of Bernie Sanders or AOC politically and that's clearly not how either one of you is using the term.

 

[Narz]

Big talk for a guy who has run away from me like 500 times on this website.

Likely people don't run away from you but simply find better things to do but that's a discussion for you and your therapist

No, I think people really dislike the democrats in general, including democrats, for all kinds of reasons. But I want to know on this one issue from where people are coming from. Maybe we can look through other lenses as we think about them and create those threads as well.

Democrats don't even like themselves.

You still strike me as a flip-flopper. You have not shed that reputation.

I respect him for changing his mind w new information.

 

[NinjaCow64]

I respect him for changing his mind w new information

That is literally the bare minimum.

 

[Narz]

He doesn't exist to please you. Maybe take the schoolgirl drama to PM.
Moderator Action: Warned for trolling. The_J

 

[NinjaCow64]

He doesn't exist to please you. Maybe take the schoolgirl drama to PM.

Why would I PM you about that? That’s a really weird thing to say…

 

[NinjaCow64]

Okay, honest question because I'm confused now: What's a social democrat, as both of you understand it? I thought it was someone along the lines of Bernie Sanders or AOC politically and that's clearly not how either one of you is using the term.

My apologies for missing your post.

I would define a Social Democrat is the furtherest most Left Wing position one can have without wishing to dismantle capitalism. It is the belief that capitalism needs to be heavily regulated in order to safeguard human rights, but not abolished. Democratic Socialists, who wish to gradually abolish Capitalism after winning elections, are a different thing.

I would describe AOC as a Social Democrat. I think Sanders self-identifies as a Democratic Socialist but he is also arguably a Social Democrat. Like all political labels, they are fuzzy.

Social Democrats are often criticised by the Left for historically being willing to side with the Far-Right whenever the Left gets too uppity, such as when the Social Democratic Government of Weimar Germany paid a bunch of Far-Right goons called the Freikorps (who later joined the Nazis) to murder near universally beloved Marxist Rosa Luxembourg and her associates. This is where ideas such as “Social Democracy is the Left Wing of Fascism” (or more simply “Social Fascism”) and the meme “Bernie Sanders killed Rosa Luxembourg” comes from.

 

[choxorn]

I'd call the history of the German Social Democratic Party in the 1910's-1930's less of an indictment of Social Democracy as a whole and more an indictment of that particular group, and that during and after the war years it more or less abandoned all but the flimsiest pretense of being committed to socialism and just turned into a standard slightly-left-of-center liberal party that would be much closer to a middle-of-the-road Democrat or Labour (UK or Aussie) Party politician than it would be to Bernie or AOC, but that's just my impression. Certainly the average supporter of modern Social Democratic parties doesn't seem like the type to join the Freikorps, to me.

Which leaves me kind of weirded out that GenMarshall identifies with that label so strongly, because it seems to me like the kind of things Social Democrats typically believe are mostly well to the left of his professed opinions, especially when he follows up that identity with being strongly anti-communist and anti-tax as some of his most important issues.

 

[GenMarshall]

It is pretty clear to me that I was included in who you were talking about. Even then, its hard to not take things personally when you have supported evil people and policies who would have seen me and my friends lives made incredibly worse in recent memory.

Full stop. Firstly, my only crime was watching Tim Pool, The Quarterling, Geeks & Gamers, and various SJW owned compilations. Secondly, I haven’t talked to you and the rest of the Tankie clique for nearly two years, how the hell am I suppose to know that you and your friends are trans?! I can only presume that the events and discussions happened in closed channels.

The way you describe your current political beliefs are confusing and nonsensical to me to the point where I cannot trust them due to your previously held opinions.

I'm already fully aware that there is no redemption within leftism, so it's no supprise that you wouldn't trust them. But that's your prerogative.

You still strike me as a flip-flopper. You have not shed that reputation.

I’m not sure how much your surroundings have changed though. You are still posting in this nasty little sub forum, liking nasty little posts.

Do you actively monitor people for wrongthink or something? How in the world are the so called posts “nasty” other than that you disagree with them? I hardly even make a peep in the LGBTQ News thread out of fear of accidentally stepping on an eggshells and get dog piled into oblivion. Tell me Inspector Javert, what other places of the interwebs do you lurk at so I can avoid them.

Here is something to self-reflect on - why do you think that people who have been on the receiving end of anti-SJW rhetoric (like myself) react so negatively to someone who insists they are still in the process of deradicalising from the far-right?

Ideally, the person would have supported the person by, in a nutshell, saying "welcome to the fight " instead of "Geee, it's not hard to be a garbage human being ". The way I see it, It's more of a dismissive "Gee, it's not hard to be a garbage human being" and treating them like a harden criminal. This is exactly, why I have been seeking out communities that are support groups for former anti-SJWs where I am expected to do better yet not judged (the opposite of what you are doing now) and don't have the baggage of my history.

SK, as far as I am aware, never supported the Republican Party or started gorging on anti-SJW content because of this. We are not talking about them. Why did your alienation drive you into the arms of the far right when it did not drive other centre-leftists into the arms of the far right?

It is what happened before. You claim that radical Leftism from IOT drove you into the arms of the radical right - what is to stop you from encountering some radical here or some other place that makes you decide that you miss being an anti-SJW and jumping right back into that rabbit hole?

How can I know you won’t start slipping back, like the numerous times that you said that you had renounced those beliefs and then started saying them again a month later?

I shouldn’t deny you agency here, ultimately it was your choice to listen to the anti-SJWs in response to what you encountered. Not mine.

Was SK in a vulnerable state when he left? I do not know his mental state, likely his was much more healthier than mines. I do not know if you're well aware of how I was in a vulnerable state back then when all the kerfuffle was stirred up in 2016 after Trump was elected and had them before Trump even rode down the escalators. May I remind you that during that time I was still working in a sucky part-time job and lost two friends due to my depression. The chiding of Social Democrats and other center-left positions did not helped matters much and only added in more rain in a downpour that I have been experiencing. What else was I suppose to do, what else am I suppose to take when #politics went from a RD standard devolved into taglines that reads "Liberal Democracy is a joke and the punchline is unending human suffering"? Take it to the chin? Suffer through the bullying and the teasing when my mental state was already in the crapper? Again, SK's departure should have been the canary in the coal mines to change course but was blissfully ignored in-favor of brewing up a politically militant chat culture. If it had been addressed and the select few who were string the pot to brew a politically militant chat culture were properly censured, then I wouldn't need a reason to seek out "SJW OWNED Compilation #9450" as a form of schadenfreude for being bullied because I'm a social democrat and wouldn't have paid any attention to Gamergate, "SJWs Ruined Ghostbusters 2016 & the Star Wars Sequels". But alas, c'est la vie.

The accusation that you assume that I'd encounter a radical leftist and jump ship into the Trump Train is just blatantly disingenuous and flat out wrong. Again, we haven't spoken in years and you do not know about my current situation. Better full paying job with benefits and new friends outside this board and at my workplace (Note, They are normies who don't even have a stake in the culture war nor are they aware of it), thus not putting me in a vulnerable state where I'm love bombed by anti-SJWs.

How am I meant to be expected to refrain from snide remarks when I receive them in kind?

I echo the same statement in return. As it stands, nither of us are even close to burring the hatchet.

 

[Farm Boy]

Talking with jerks online is likely to remain talking with jerks online.

 

[Arakhor]

Moderator Action: Once again, something that looks like it should be a private conversation probably  ought to be a private conversation. Not because it's against the rules, but because it quickly becomes an invitation for people to talk  about you, not  to you, and that we don't want. Thank you.

 

[NinjaCow64]

less abandoned all but the flimsiest pretense of being committed to socialism

I, personally, would define the difference between a Social Democrat and a Democratic Socialist is that a DemSoc has a commitment for building socialism/communism and a Social Democrat doesn't, they just want social programs + capitalism.

Which leaves me kind of weirded out that GenMarshall identifies with that label so strongly, because it seems to me like the kind of things Social Democrats typically believe are mostly well to the left of his professed opinions, especially when he follows up that identity with being strongly anti-communist and anti-tax as some of his most important issues.

I would not personally consider anti-tax to make sense as a Social Democratic position as you need taxes to pay for social programs.

I will not go into further detail on this as I have been asked to stop.

 

[Lexicus]

Social Democrats are often criticised by the Left for historically being willing to side with the Far-Right whenever the Left gets too uppity, such as when the Social Democratic Government of Weimar Germany paid a bunch of Far-Right goons called the Freikorps (who later joined the Nazis) to murder near universally beloved Marxist Rosa Luxembourg and her associates. This is where ideas such as “Social Democracy is the Left Wing of Fascism” (or more simply “Social Fascism”) and the meme “Bernie Sanders killed Rosa Luxembourg” comes from.

I would also point out that Social Fascism was abandoned as a concept by the Soviet Union and Comintern shortly after Hitler took power in Germany, because his conduct with respect to the Communist Party and the trade union movement made it very apparent that there were big important differences between fascism and social democracy.

Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism (which I see as the same thing, fwiw) are the literal "center-left" ideologies. In Germany the SPD was relatively conservative, probably roughly analogous to today's US Democratic Party except a bit further right culturally and a bit further left economically.

I answered the poll saying I'm pro because I generally consider the dems the less-bad option and as much as I dislike them in general, they are not actively genocidal against trans people, not trying to kill and torture women for the crime of getting pregnant, and not trying to accelerate global warming (among other differences I consider meaningful) and so as a communist of some sort, I "conditionally support" them which is enough for me to answer using the "pro" poll option. Certainly I want to see Brandon win again, he is a vastly better option than any Republican despite his various deficiencies.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Okay, honest question because I'm confused now: What's a social democrat, as both of you understand it? I thought it was someone along the lines of Bernie Sanders or AOC politically and that's clearly not how either one of you is using the term.

My apologies for missing your post.

I would define a Social Democrat is the furtherest most Left Wing position one can have without wishing to dismantle capitalism. It is the belief that capitalism needs to be heavily regulated in order to safeguard human rights, but not abolished. Democratic Socialists, who wish to gradually abolish Capitalism after winning elections, are a different thing.

I would describe AOC as a Social Democrat. I think Sanders self-identifies as a Democratic Socialist but he is also arguably a Social Democrat. Like all political labels, they are fuzzy.

Social Democrats are often criticised by the Left for historically being willing to side with the Far-Right whenever the Left gets too uppity, such as when the Social Democratic Government of Weimar Germany paid a bunch of Far-Right goons called the Freikorps (who later joined the Nazis) to murder near universally beloved Marxist Rosa Luxembourg and her associates. This is where ideas such as “Social Democracy is the Left Wing of Fascism” (or more simply “Social Fascism”) and the meme “Bernie Sanders killed Rosa Luxembourg” comes from.

I'd call the history of the German Social Democratic Party in the 1910's-1930's less of an indictment of Social Democracy as a whole and more an indictment of that particular group, and that during and after the war years it more or less abandoned all but the flimsiest pretense of being committed to socialism and just turned into a standard slightly-left-of-center liberal party that would be much closer to a middle-of-the-road Democrat or Labour (UK or Aussie) Party politician than it would be to Bernie or AOC, but that's just my impression. Certainly the average supporter of modern Social Democratic parties doesn't seem like the type to join the Freikorps, to me.

Which leaves me kind of weirded out that GenMarshall identifies with that label so strongly, because it seems to me like the kind of things Social Democrats typically believe are mostly well to the left of his professed opinions, especially when he follows up that identity with being strongly anti-communist and anti-tax as some of his most important issues.

@NinjaCow64 's description of a Social Democrat pretty well explains why I usually demur when I'm asked to categorize myself, politically. I do appreciate the clarification, though. To say that political labels are 'fuzzy' seems like an understatement if we can go from Bernie Sanders to the Freikorps of Weimar Germany so quickly. 'Bernie Sanders killed Rosa Luxembourg' sounds like a dorm-room poster, at first blush, and unless someone insists there's really some wisdom to it, I'd be inclined to blow it off as half-baked*. I remember talking to a conservative-leaning colleague around the 2016 primaries, and Bernie Sanders came up in conversation, and my friend noted that he'd grown up in the Soviet Union and was very familiar with socialism. He went from Bernie Sanders to Soviet Communism in one step. Oookayy...



* In both senses of the word 'baked', I suppose.

 

[NinjaCow64]

. 'Bernie Sanders killed Rosa Luxembourg' sounds like a dorm-room poster, at first blush, and unless someone insists there's really some wisdom to it, I'd be inclined to blow it off as half-baked*.

No, its real. Bernie Sanders got in a time machine and he said "awh dang, its time ta kill that broad" in his Brooklyn accent and then he activated the time machine and took a potshot at Rosa Luxembourg, alongside with every single other Social Democrat in their own state subsidied time machines.

Its a joke.

To say that political labels are 'fuzzy' seems like an understatement if we can go from Bernie Sanders to the Freikorps of Weimar Germany so quickly.

Well that's an extreme example that I used, but like what an ideology is often shifts from era to era and depending on who you ask about it. That's more what I mean by fuzzy.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Well that's an extreme example that I used, but like what an ideology is often shifts from era to era and depending on who you ask about it. That's more what I mean by fuzzy.

Right, yeah, that's why I usually dodge those labels. I never know what the person I'm talking to will infer from it.

 

[gay_Aleks]

To be fair, it is somewhat irrelevant as to whether you vote Republican or Democrat in the global scale of matters, as both parties happily contribute to the plunder of the planet (this is where I agree with my parents, but not with the nuclear bombings, as a moderate)

 

[Harv]

This is an interesting question. I am Canadian, but have lived in the USA the past 23 years. My biases would be a combination of where exactly I came from (Canadian Prairies, farm country), what my parents believed, and which news media I listened to. They shift somewhat from move to move. It might even be possible they shift to slightly oppose the dominant politics of the region I live in, because my list of views do not exactly match Team R or Team D, and therefore I get marked as an opponent.

My parents are both still alive. I can get thoughts on US Presidents all the way back to FDR.

When I was in university, I would pick up a copy of the WSJ and was fond of reading their editorials. This would color my views on quite a few propositions. I believe there was been a shift in the WSJ over the past 30 years. A lot of other views have been colored by listening to talk radio.

In some ways, I am cynical in that there are two parties in the USA that are dominant, but the vast majority of the population does not get represented. Since there are two dominant parties, they will each be composed of multiple factions that are allied. Ultimately, they will represent whoever funds their campaigns and gets them elected. People from European countries might have an interesting perspective on multiple parties and a title naming the primary interests of the party - Perhaps a simple two-word party name and a two-color flag is easier to understand.

Since my views have been colored to the past, I am interested in hearing perspectives of Team R and Team D - with an added full understanding that D is not short for DJT.