this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
507 points (85.4% liked)
Lefty Memes
4514 readers
119 users here now
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
Rules
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
- Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I see a lot of people in this thread justifying murder when that's REALLY not what's needed. That will just lead to the only people willing to be cops is maniacs with a gun (who are NOT in short supply) when we really need cops who can take a moment and think.
Those people are actively filtered out by police.
It's not hard to make it through the application process as a compassionate, clever person.
It's just hard to stay employed while butting heads with supervisors that aren't, and the public sends you thoughts and prayers from the sidelines. Sure, they'll riot when evil cops are caught doing evil stuff, but they do absolutely nothing to notice or stop good cops from getting forced out.
Source: My time in law enforcement and my interactions with the public on Reddit where I told my story.
Ah, so because there's a fire we need to pour gasoline on it?
That's quite what our justice system does: treat violence with even more violence.
So we may as well make it worse.
No abolitionist wants to replace the justice system with no system of accountability and societal healing. 🙄
What would you do to murderers in this system of yours?
After a quick google, I found an abolitionist faq. It's no "world of mine". Abolitionism has quite the history, way before I got into it.
Edit: Here's another text to answer your question
We need to murder the concept of cops as we know them today. That's the only murder we need. No individual's death will fix a fucked up system, gotta kill the system itself.
People will not have any interest in going without law enforcement for X days/weeks/months/years while you reboot everything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest
Well, I'd realistically suggest a slow strangle while we build up the alternative in tandem, maybe not "murder", but I opted to use the wording of the poster I replied to.
What would the alternative be? I have never heard of a realistic solution that will be anywhere near the Overton Window and also backed up by data. Again, the last time Americans went without cops (CHAZ), it was a total disaster that "replaced" cops with people who did a far worse job when tasked with the same responsibilities.
I'm not criticizing your use of the word "murder."
Re: murder, it was more a personal clarification hahah, murder implies a swift execution, versus a slow change.
I do not claim to have the solution. That's outside of my area of expertise. What I can say is that the implementation of policing we have now is failing, and I'd rather move towards something new than spin my wheels now.
I can also say that, with how everything else in our society is organized, our current system of policing is probably the most practical. Any kind of change to it will likely be predicated on many other facets of society changing first or in tandem. I have no illusions that it'll be an easy change.
That sounds like my kind of accelerationism. Eventually cops will have to be dramatically changed.
Is this a quote from 1894 or 2024?
Did I actually incidentally quote something again?
Yeah... the fed-posting isn't good. However, the current system of policing, and the entire rotten criminal justice system, is a system of oppression, is responsible immense amounts of pain and suffering, and can't be saved by just hiring better people. Cruelty (and upholding hierarchy) is the point.
I maintain that firing bad people and hiring good people is the only realistic way to increase the Good:Bad ratio high enough that many of these problems will evaporate.
My guess is its Kremlin propaganda, the same divisive stuff they pushed during the George Floyd riots
No man, there is plenty of organic distrust of the police here. The whole legal industry is fucked.
Sure, that's how they work. They find a crack and use a wedge.
It's not a crack. This is a grand canyon scale chasm. The decline of the opinion of the police closely follows the release, and reporting, of crimes, and other unethical behaviors, of police. When BWC first started, it was a boon to the reputation of police. However, as the general public has been more able to record police themselves, which strips the police's control of the who, when, how, and editing, of the recordings the public sees, the opposite effect started to happen. Now the police are working, furiously, to prevent people from recording them, from publicly releasing recordings of police for various reasons, making it harder, if not impossible, to attain BWC footage, and straight-up stopping the use of BWC. A lot more than that is going on. There has been a deluge of leaks of internal communications, amongst authorities, across the country, that are clearly stating that the cops should continue using unconstitutional practices, and that the government, at least locally, would have their backs. Then there is the leaking of footage from some of the most popular training regimes, and conferences, for police that are way out of line, showing they are clearly being trained to view the entire public as the enemy, and that it is fine to kill people, because the cop going home at the end of the shift, is the most important thing there is. This is just the tip of the iceberg of reasons why the police are losing favor.
The police, the courts, the legislature, are who is responsible for the public outcry against the police. Not Russia, not China, not any foreign power.
No, you're ignorant.
I'm not an idiot, but you are an asshole.
Yeah, I agree a lot of them are kind of dumb, many of them are power tripping assholes. Doesn't mean people should be ADVOCATING FOR THEIR FUCKING MURDER.
Complete horseshit. If you actually think that maybe you're the one who's real dumb.
I wish. There was that one cop was put away for defending a woman from SA a year after snitching on his fellow officers. His laywer said never heard of jail time for 1st time misdominer. They literally put him in a cell with a known cop killer. Who said naa this is one of the good ones.
This one time a bad thing happened so now its OK to advocate murder
Sure, all the police violence incidents are "individual outliers". /s
Can you think in anything more nuanced than anecdotes and sweeping generalizations? Got anything better than a strawman to respond with?
Why would I think of something better than a strawman when replying to a strawman?
As I said in another post: Cops protect the bourgeois, white-supremacist, colonialist, patriarchal state by enacting violence on the ruled class. That's not a judgement: it's their purpose in the system.
Individuals with bully-like personalities self-select into that job, while decent people are actively shunned. Because group cohesion is more important than "doing the right thing".
Why do you defend cops so much?
Oh no, I'm American and just been walked through the system too many times to believe in it. They're terrorists and calling themselves your protectors.