this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 66 points 5 months ago (49 children)

It's a "no true scotsman" but those aren't leftists. Leftists don't praise and try to emulate autocrats. Those are people pretending to be leftists who are trying to co-opt, radicalize, or confuse leftists.

Leftism by definition is opposed to authoritarians.

[–] PugJesus 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Some are pretending to be leftists. But some just have a Manichean view of the world that they can't shake. Some people change labels when they convert from fundamentalist religion or blind nationalism, but don't change the framework of their views.

No shit, I have seen people outright denying Houthi atrocities because "They wouldn't do something like that!"

Because the Houthis are opposed to The Great Satan(tm), they're automatically rewritten in these people's minds to be at least acceptable in every facet of their existence.

[–] masquenox 7 points 5 months ago (15 children)

Some are pretending to be leftists.

Says the liberal pretending to be a leftist.

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[–] Venat0r 39 points 5 months ago

New phone huthis?

[–] suction 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

FYI: Those leftists are right wing trolls under a false flag, exactly like those “Biden takes 100% blame for Israel’s every action” guys. They come from /pol and Telegram.

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[–] Aceticon 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

People who think rather than be mindless tribalists can approve of a specific action of a group without approving of their ideology or other actions of theirs.

For example I approve of what the Biden Adminstration has done towards Ukraine whilst not approving of their ideology that puts the Democratic control of people's life in a nation (i.e. the vote that controls the leaders of the state who make decisions for how the state acts for the good of the many) below Oligarchic control (I.e. Money decides) by defending that the state should not regulate anything that might impact Money or "interfere in the Market", and do not approve of their unconditional support of the quasi-Nazis know as Zionists even in the middle of them committing a Genocide.

One has to wonder if the endless posts by this user constantly trying to misportray "lefties" as basically all "commies" (including a cartoon the other day where the leftie character wore a red shirt with a hammer and a sickle just in case we were in any doubt what he thought "lefties" were) isn't very purposeful tribalist propaganda from a very specific American Political Tribe that passes itself for left over there whilst being pro-Oligarch hard-right.

Certainly this endless hammering of the same drum has a very similar stink as the kind of argumentation we get from mindless Trumpists (pre-made generalizations about other people presented as "I know best what they are [even though I've never been anywhere close to that political side]"), clearly driven by the same mindless tribalism and structured as broad strokes group slandering Propaganda (it's hard to stroke more broadly than the entire Left) only this messaging is coming from the pro-Oligarch American Right rather than from the Fascist American Right.

[–] PugJesus 5 points 5 months ago (3 children)

One has to wonder if the endless posts by this user constantly trying to misportray “lefties” as basically all “commies”

Oh, is that what I'm trying to do? Here I thought I was addressing a specific subset of leftists that is common here on Lemmy.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago

Too many people claiming to be on the left are just "America bad, therefore anyone who hates America is good" full-stop.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

What's more likely;

Their online identities are real and their support for authoritarian nazi-types is fake.

OR

Their online identities are just a mask and their support for authoritarian nazi-types is 100% genuine.

[–] barsquid 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Given how much Lemmy "leftists" trip all over each other in order to praise the Chinese characteristics that cause "socialism" to produce billionaires while overlooking human rights abuses, yeah, I think it is the authoritarianism they like and not the economics.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

There’s certainly a “baby socialist” to china stan pipeline. I’ve heard people blame PSL for this irl, but that group doesn’t exist in my area. Online, there’s probably some communities that i could care less about that act as these pipelines.

And if you stay at that baby socialist stage and come out on the other side of the pipeline, you will end up one of the least socialistic people who has deeply authoritarian views and the worst takes. “Ah yes, i’m a socialist, we need 100 years of brutal authoritarian state capitalism to build our industrial capacity to allow us to transition to socialism. That’s what marx meant when talking about the dictatership of the proletariat.” -statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged

[–] hellofriend 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Hate to tell you but authoritarianism isn't endemic to either the left or the right.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

The most common one I have seen irl is people who are actually on the left, communists, trotskyists, marxist-leninists who are extremly anti-america under the guise of anti-imperialism who have slowly turned into campist “if they are against america that’s good” types

How much they like them varies. I’ve seen people who hate them, they just hate them less than the US, and see them as a part in their undoing. I’ve seen people who kinda like them, but only in the sense they are a resistance. Granted, those people will actually condemn them if it comes to their crimes.

I’ve also seen people focus solely on the yemeni people, and after giving a speech at a protest someone got upset at them for “supporting the houthis.” And in that speech that person mentioned the yemeni people’s suffering under the houthis and their need to go. Some people will also just conflate individual living under a repressive regime to being a member of it, and use that to vilify solidarity with the oppressed. I’ve seen that a lot with calling every palestinian a hamas supporter.

Online people, on the other hand… 😬

[–] friend_of_satan 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

In case anybody was unaware, here's some info about the Houthi flag:

The slogan of the Houthi movement (officially called "Ansar Allah"), a Shia Islamist political and military organization in Yemen, reads "God Is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan_of_the_Houthi_movement

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[–] Zehzin 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

🙋Is saying "fucking up Israeli ships is based" considered praising Houthis?

[–] PugJesus 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Praising, no. Dumb, usually; since Israeli ships aren't even the majority of targets hit by the Houthis.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Also the majority of ships attacked by the Houthis are civilian. You can't complain that Israel isn't doing enough to protect civilians in Gaza and then cheer for attacks on civilians.

[–] PugJesus 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I can 'get' a limited argument for that in a 'total war' sense of economic warfare, though I'd still regard it as abhorrent.

Fact is it's not even that much, though. It's just random attacks on shipping because their paymasters benefit from the chaos and the Houthis benefit from the raised profile.

[–] Zehzin 11 points 5 months ago

MFers can't even do one thing fully based smh

[–] x4740N 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I haven't heard anything about this so I'm not sure about this claim unless anyone is able to link credible evidence

And remember that politics is a spectrum and has its own faction

Remember that we are all human amd we should be working together for a common cause to remove bigotry, intolerance and those who preach intolerance from the world and we should be working towards transitioning away from the exploitative system of capitalism

[–] PugJesus 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

I haven’t heard anything about this so I’m not sure about this claim unless anyone is able to link credible evidence

Sure. How many examples do you want? Just from Lemmy, or are articles from Left-wing magazines alright too? Twitter and Reddit are low-hanging fruit, so we can exclude them.

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[–] x0x7 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

When are people on both the right and left going to learn. There is no one in the middle east who's values actually align with yours. So stop supporting a side and lets get our selves completely out of not our business.

Though genocide is our business so that's the one time we should take a side.

But in everything else where we've taken a side it has been a mistake. Folk on all sides of the middle east project to the west an image they hope will garner sympathy in hopes we will fight wars for them and they can avoid fighting their own wars. "Genuineness" is a uniquely western thing to see as a positive value. Absolutely no culture in the middle east values presenting an honest image of themselves to us. The idea of that being socially positive or necessary for their own sense of ethics is literally foreign to them. I'm not trying to single out Muslim countries or Israel. What I'm saying is we in the west do in fact have values that are particular to us, and we need to stop imagining those values on others. That's why the whole of the middle east is like that. Because they aren't us.

Then the other thing we should understand is that all sides employ what are basically professional communicators who study our culture and use what they understand of it to manipulate us. So we get dragged into problems that aren't ours and expose ourselves to actual security threats as a result.

[–] LaLuzDelSol 7 points 5 months ago

The Kurds are pretty based, all things considered. They deserved better.

[–] ZMoney 5 points 5 months ago

Which values? I have met authoritarians, democrats, socialists, and theocrats in Missouri. Why should Yemen be different? I find this "East vs. West" cultural/values narrative to be a convenient fiction for demagogues to take advantage of.

[–] LaLuzDelSol 4 points 5 months ago

I remember seeing a pro-Palestine protest in Atlanta where they were chanting "Yemen, Yemen do us proud/turn another ship around", so yeah this isn't a straw man claim.

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