what’s the end goal here Zohran. ‘Socialism’ (actually social democracy) but with a roving gang of armed and organized fascists that we just ignore? are we just going to kick the issue of systemic racism down the road because it’s “woke 1” to even talk about, until it becomes a powder keg again? this is the actual internal DSA white chauvinism contradiction that MSM are clawing to find but they won’t use it as a real wedge because it’d increase the salience of Defund again
Your argument that it’s a win for “socialism” to become associated with mealy-mouthed compromised reformism and have it smeared into being hated?
I think the opposite. That the vulgarization and cooption of socialism into meaningless Liberalism is Bad Actually. All this accomplishes is further confusing the masses and making them hate “socialism” (sell out Liberalism)
https://redsails.org/esquerda-reformista/
it’s not even reformism, it’s associating socialism with social liberalism (which i know you are basically saying with your second paragraph but I already brought this essay up later on down the thread so I wanted to post here too)
There is no smearing of socialism via Mamdani that could compare to the century of anti-communist propaganda every living person in the U.S. has already been steeped in. The best modern comparison here is probably Obama or AOC: labeling them socialists has not made socialism less popular.
This is also presuming that Mamdani largely fails and does bad things. If he delivers on childcare, public grocery stores, better public transit… hell yeah I want that associated with socialism.
I don’t know enough about Zohran or DSA’s actual agenda. Selling out would be bad but also - what are the conditions for an actual revolution to occur?
People were I think massively depressed by Obama and the consequence. But the masses are starting to get angry now. And this can still go either way: Trump with MAGA fascism is already in charge and shown very much the failure, but it can very much get worse. I think that is what the plutocrats are aiming for. Some form of technofeudalism.
So I think you need SOME kind of ideological alternative in the public consciousness. Like actually getting out there to the masses. Better the DSA than absolutely nothing. And Zohran got what plants crave. It’s got socialisms! Anybody half intelligent should realize that it will be near impossible to even get the mildest social democratic / democratic socialism reforms through.
So as long as Zohran actually tries something beyond politics as usual, really anything, and if even that fails because of pushback by plutocrats that wouldn’t be the worst outcome.
Historically social democrats always side with fascism. I really implore you to read of the Russian and German revolutions
Or you mean like hypothetically, if patriots were to start killing plutocrats, Mamdani would side with law and order and join the outrage machine? Yeah quite possibly. Even if he was a democratic socialist, in his role as elected major he can only act as a social democrat within the laws and political realities. That is the sort of double bind some highly intelligent sociopath would be paid the big bucks to come up. I wonder which plutocrat will sacrifice one of his idiot sons for this kind of false flag operation. Definitely sounds like a good script for a movie. Apropos:
Lol. What’s hilarious though is “Mayor Zohran Mamdani has not committed to revoking the press passes”. That’s the sort of high level shit-politicking I can get behind.
I mean besides this he’s very vocal about the actual fascism inside the US and it’s illegal wars.
I actually don’t know much about Mamdani so I don’t know either. This article puts it quite well: Mamdani Is Actually a Social Democrat. Here’s Why That Matters. | The New Republic
So you might be right. Personally I think history is a poor predictor for the future. In my (formerly known as social democratic) country the rejection of democratic socialism is kinda worse. More based on the rejection of the excesses of actual socialist parties. We don’t even have a Mamdani. A popular politician that close to actual political assassination? *Sad inconceivable noises
I believe the bigger issue is that there is no modern and coherent and mostly complete socialist theory that can serve as an actionable political platform. Something concise, and written in recent history. A socialism that has at least some ideas of how to use information technology to democratize economic power.
If the universe makes sense, if literally anything is actionable except for the arbitrary dictates of a God, this cannot be true. We need to avoid hasty equivocation between past and present circumstances just as we need to avoid hasty equivocation between contemporary circumstances in different places, but there is truly nothing to be done if you take this stance.
You have seriously let the liberals gaslight you about Marxism being too old. Yes, new analysis must always be conducted and new strategies formed to meet new conditions (and research done to correct old mistakes, including Marx’s mistakes), but the fundamental framework of Marxism is still the best basis we have.