I’m an old school Southern Democrat. I’m Progressive and extremely to the left of modern Democrats. I believe that everyone is entitled to a standard of living and that includes a home and a mode of transportation and a mode of communication and a way to provide for themselves. I hate how the New Southern vision was sabotaged by Reagan and the Republican Party. We could’ve had a more inclusive and diverse South. I’m from the Gulf Coast. When I was growing up the Gulf Coast was the last bastion of Southern Democratic dominance. Republicans have taken over our area and corrupted the minds of our people. Southern Democrats are often seen as a monolith but just like the overall Democratic Party it was a big tent. I believe we can revive the Progressive tradition in the South but it’s going to take effort.
Honestly, I was pretty disappointed when I opened this website and started reading the responses to my post. I came here expecting a Progressive space where people could engage with different perspectives in good faith and I was hoping for some positive, constructive engagement.
Instead, a lot of the comments seemed more interested in telling me that my beliefs somehow cannot exist or lumping me in with Dixiecrats than actually engaging with what I wrote. I’m a Southern Democrat and my political outlook comes from my own experiences, history and understanding. You don’t have to agree with me but dismissing the entire perspective as impossible or contradictory isn’t meaningful engagement.
I was hoping for a conversation, not a pile-on. I still believe there is room for different kinds of progressive and Democratic traditions, including Southern ones and I would have much rather had a thoughtful discussion about that.
I watched your tiktoks. I can say some constructive things about them. I think you won’t mind because you posted your real name on hexbear multiple times.
Many of your videos focus on the topic of “narcissism”. In a lot of your videos, you talk about grievances and societal problems, such as sexism, racism, etc. In the videos, you posit that these problems are caused by “narcissism”. I think you mean selfishness.
The theory that you propose in the videos is that the society problems are caused by “narcissism”, which I think you mean selfishness or moral failing. I would like to propose that you take this idea and imagine it upside down. Instead of bad human behavior causing material problems, the material system is what causes bad human behavior.
A company is selfish if they withhold your pay. They withhold your pay because it benefits them materially. The selfishness is the product of the action, not the enabler of the action.
Why does this distinction matter? You can’t create a society that forces people to not be selfish. You can make a society that doesn’t have the mechanisms which enable selfishness. As long as the bourgeoisie continues to exist, the bourgeoisie will try to exploit the proletariat. As long as wage labor exists, then wage labor exploitation exists.
I would also say that morals are subjective but exploitation is objective. Whether someone is “narcissistic” or selfish, is immaterial. Whether someone commits exploitation is measurable. Working towards a society without exploitation is a material goal. Working towards a society without “narcissism” is an idealist goal. I’m putting “narcissism” in quotes because the word seems too much like psychiatrist language.
The 4 minute video about beards being a sign of toxicity was funny.
About the “southern democrat” thing. You acknowledge that there was a party swap in the 1960s. The thing you don’t really mention is why there was a party swap in Southern US in the 1960s.
In the 1960s, the republican party adopted a policy called ‘Southern Strategy’, this meant being racist against black people. The thing that made Southern Democrats change to be Republicans was appeals to racism. This means that Southern Democrats cared more about being racist than progressive prior to changing parties. If a more racist party existing is what caused ‘Old Southern Democrats’ to switch parties, that would mean Old Southern Democrats were racists. When you say “old school Southern Democrat”, people are hearing “democrat plus segregation”, It wasn’t just Dixiecrats or Strom Thurmond, it was the entire South that was segregated.
Lyndon B. Johnson, in the 1960s Tennessee said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” Southern Democrat voters in the 1960s switched parties because they decided that hurting black people was more important than helping themselves.
The truth is that the economy of the Southern US has always been propped up by an underclass of labor. There was slave plantations prior to the so-called abolition of slavery. After the abolition of slavery, the underclass of labor in the south was Jim Crow Segregation, Prison Labor, and undocumented immigrants.
I’m not saying that you are racist. I know that you’ve said that take on certain labels because you had family members that you liked who taught you about certain people. This might be hard to hear, you need to apply criticism to your own beliefs and labels when you learn new information. You don’t have to feel bad. You don’t have to apologize to anyone. If your beliefs and labels have contradictions, you should correct yourself. You don’t have to tell anyone that you corrected yourself.
Idols should be people who accomplished good things, not because they said good things. We read Lenin because he accomplished a successful socialist revolution, not just because he said good things.
You made a few threads about the South not having public transportation. Have you considered why the Southern US doesn’t have transportation? The South doesn’t have public transportation because of segregation. The city planners in the South made areas hard to navigate so that black people would be separated from white people. That and the car industry makes profits forcing every person to drive a car.
You can’t just say that it would be good for the South to have public transportation and expect it to manifest from that. You have to explore and address the material reasons why the South doesn’t have public transportation.
You’re responding to a version of my argument that I didn’t actually make. I never said there was some clean, instantaneous “party swap” in the 1960s. That’s precisely the kind of oversimplification I’m criticizing. The partisan realignment of the South was a long process that unfolded over decades, and different generations, states, counties and individuals moved in different directions at different times.
And no, it is not historically accurate to reduce the entire older Southern population to “people who were racist until the Republican Party gave them a better place to be racist.” Not every Southern person of the Greatest or Silent Generations had the same political beliefs, motives or attitudes toward Black people. Most older Southerners remained Democrats for the rest of their lives, even as the national Democratic Party changed dramatically around them. My own great-grandparents are a pretty good example: they were old-school Southern Democrats who voted for Barack Obama twice. They didn’t suddenly become Republicans because of some racial “party switch.”
You’re also doing something I see constantly in discussions about the South: turning an extremely complicated history into one giant moral explanation for everything that is wrong with the region today.
The South did have public transportation. Southern cities had streetcars, buses, rail systems and other forms of urban transit. New Orleans, Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Jackson, Mobile and countless other Southern cities had substantial transit systems. Their decline involved automobiles, suburbanization, federal transportation policy, highway construction, disinvestment, changing land-use patterns and in some places, racial politics and segregation. That’s a much more complicated story than “Southern racism caused cars.”
And that’s really my objection to your entire argument: you’re taking real historical phenomena and turning them into a single moral explanation for everything. That’s not material analysis. That’s just another kind of reductionism.
There were plenty of older Southerners who were good, decent people who loved their communities, believed in public institutions, supported labor and government programs and remained Democrats their entire lives.
And frankly, I don’t need to pretend my great-grandparents were secretly villains because they were born in the South. They lived through Jim Crow, Katrina and enormous social changes and they still voted for Obama twice. That alone should tell you why I’m resistant to the idea that “old Southern Democrat” can simply be translated into “segregationist.”
You also said I “acknowledge that there was a party swap in the 1960s.” I don’t. I talk about a long-term realignment, not a magical 1960s party swap where every Southern Democrat simultaneously woke up one morning and became a Republican. Those are two very different claims.
And that’s exactly why I think your critique is too simplistic. You’re right that material conditions matter. You’re right that economic structures influence human behavior. But material conditions don’t eliminate individual agency.
Ann Richards, shortly before her death, talked about how the Republican Party’s rise in the South helped separate and ultimately draw away one particular faction of Southern Democrats, which is important because it shows there was never one monolithic “Southern Democrat” bloc to begin with. There were different strands of Southern Democrats, from segregationists and conservative traditionalists to New Deal Democrats, populists, labor Democrats and increasingly progressive Democrats and those groups did not all realign in the same way or at the same time.
I don’t know why you think that I’m trying to debate you or argue with you. My comment was to acclimate you to the website and to Marxism more broadly. You say that my critique is simple and yes my comment is simple because it was written for you to be easy to understand, not as a debate. What good would it be for me to speak in a complex way and then for you to not understand it?
“But material conditions don’t eliminate individual agency.” Yes, they do. Why are you living in a motel right now instead of mansion? Is it because you chose to live in a motel or is it because you lacked agency in the decision? Material conditions create a power structure. The power structure exists to limit or eliminate agency. Other people’s actions are also shaped by their material conditions, even the people who have wronged you. Nobody exists in a vacuum, every person is a creature responding to the system around them.
This is a thought experiment for you. You asked for constructive commentary. If someone wrongs you, imagine the systemic reasons that lead to the person behaving that way. This is not meant to absolve the person who wronged you, nor does it shift the blame to the victim. This is meant to explore systemic structures that cause injustices.
You made multiple videos about your uncle stealing your soda. I suspect there’s some deeper reasons why you dislike your uncle and you use this as like a simple explanation for a larger beef, but let’s pretend it’s actually all about the soda stealing. What is the solution to “uncles stealing soda”? You go on a diatribe about how narcissism makes people drink other people’s soda. (No offense) I don’t think that moral shaming is going to stop uncles from stealing soda. I think there’s probably a systemic reason why uncles would feel that they deserve to drink the soda of their nephews. In at least one video, you mentioned being opposed to the nuclear family. Friedrich Engels writes criticisms of the nuclear family in a book called ‘Origin of Family’.
Remember, I’m not trying to argue with you. You see how other commenters reacted negatively to your post. I said that you seem like a real person. I’m not doing a “pile-on”. I said that hexbear should give you a chance, metaphorically speaking. I don’t speak for all of hexbear. I can see that you are passionate and in a tough situation.
Your argument about some Southern Democrats not being racist is pointless because “southern” is not the only issue with the label. Hexbear does not support Democrats. Democrats are not socialists. Democrats are people who believe that capitalism can be preserved with social safety nets. I don’t care whether your grandparents voted for Obama when I don’t support Obama.
Democrats are not even the most progressive figures in the history of the South. There were communists in the South. Democrats are not communists or socialists. Democrats are not even left wing, not now and not historically either. FDR is seen as a beloved Democrat figure for his ‘New Deal’ policies. The ineffectiveness of “old school” Democrat policies is that most of the elements of the ‘New Deal’ have been utterly gutted. Minimum wage was a policy created by the New Deal and minimum wage in Mississippi is still $7.25. The purpose of the ‘New Deal’ was to block socialism and look where that got.
I think that it really sucks that you are in a bad situation. My advice to you is that you find a socialist organization in your area, not a democrat organization. Look for either DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) or PSL (Party for Socialism & Liberation). There’s a PSL for Mississippi and a PSL in Birmingham AL. There’s a DSA in Ocean Springs Mississippi and a DSA in Mobile Alabama. These groups all have pages on instagram. There’s some other locations if you google it.
Try to find a socialist organization in your area. See if they recommend other organizations in your area. Try to branch out. Don’t tell them that you’re a Democrat. Say that you were a Democrat and you feel that you are Left of their policies now. Be open to learning new things. Maybe they can help you or you can help them.
You’re confusing material conditions with character. Circumstances beyond our control severely limit our options. I’m living in a motel, working to support myself and my wife and struggling to escape a situation I didn’t choose. But despite my extreme hardship, I haven’t become selfish, bitter, narcissistic or entitled. I believe in personal responsibility and accountability and I refuse to use my circumstances as an excuse to mistreat people. What happens to us and how we choose to treat others are two different things. And I found that struggle and hardship always makes people more empathetic and understanding and when people have narcissistic tendencies it’s from privilege.
My situation is an anomaly, not a universal representation of American life. America is an extraordinarily privileged country by global standards, yet Americans routinely act like oppressed peasants, treating every setback as proof that the system is against them. Some people genuinely have limited options; others have choices they’re unwilling to take responsibility for. Acknowledging systemic inequality doesn’t mean pretending individual agency doesn’t exist.
I also think we need to recognize that privilege and entitlement encourage narcissistic behavior. When people become accustomed to having their needs prioritized, they develop a sense of superiority and an expectation that others should accommodate them. That kind of entitlement isn’t a symptom of oppression. It is a product of privilege itself.
I’ve encountered local communists and leftists who minimized my struggle, dismissed my circumstances and even called me privileged. I was expected to quiet down about my actual hardship because my experience complicated their preferred narrative about oppression and class. What’s the point of claiming to care about material conditions if you’re unwilling to acknowledge someone’s real circumstances because they don’t fit your ideology?
Our social programs and the language of oppression have increasingly been appropriated in ways that leave the most vulnerable people behind while accommodating people who are already privileged. Programs intended to help people in genuine need can become entangled in political priorities, eligibility categories and competing narratives about who deserves compassion. I’ve experienced extreme malnutrition and continue to suffer disabilities as a result, yet I struggle to access assistance or even receive basic empathy for what I’m going through. I’m living in a motel, working to survive and fighting to recover while being dismissed or told I’m privileged. When someone experiencing this level of hardship cannot get help or compassion, we need to question whether our systems and the people defending them are actually prioritizing those in the greatest need or simply prioritizing the people who fit their preferred narrative.
The moment I described the full extent of my own circumstances, I was expected to be quiet about certain aspects of my experience because they didn’t fit the narrative. I wasn’t simply being asked to understand structural inequality. I was being made to feel that I needed to minimize my own hardship to accommodate somebody else’s ideological framework.
Your example about the motel and the mansion actually illustrates my point. I didn’t choose to experience Katrina, lose my family and our wealth, have my vehicle break down or find myself in an area where transportation is a serious barrier.
Americans love performing the role of oppressed peasants while politicians and society placate them, creating a self-perpetuating club of privileged, enabled people who make excuses for one another, validate each other’s entitlement and then treat people experiencing genuine, devastating hardship with condescension and indifference; meanwhile, people like me are expected to endlessly extend them empathy, understanding and grace that they refuse to extend to us, even gaslighting us by insisting we’re more privileged than they are, because apparently facing extreme adversity with dignity, strength and personal accountability while having far less than they do somehow convinces them we’re doing better than they are, rather than exposing how deeply they’ve confused privilege with victimhood.
Even leftists who claim to champion the oppressed become visibly dismissive, uppity and disgusted when confronted with the reality of my suffering, revealing that their compassion often has more to do with ideological narratives and solidarity and empathy with the privileged majority than with actually standing beside people enduring extreme hardship.
My uncle’s behavior exposed the mentality of a user: he felt entitled to most of my Pepsi after asking for a sip, then went and bought himself a fresh one while leaving me with what was left of mine. But the soda was only a small glimpse of a much bigger pattern. He benefited from my father’s wealth when it served him, then abandoned and shamed my father when that wealth disappeared. That’s the real issue: being happy to enjoy the benefits of someone else’s generosity while refusing to show loyalty when that person no longer has anything to offer you. You can analyze the systemic influences behind someone’s behavior all day long but that doesn’t erase the selfishness of taking from others when it’s convenient and abandoning them when the benefits run out. There’s a difference between understanding a person’s circumstances and making excuses for a pattern of behavior that treats other people as resources to be used rather than human beings deserving of reciprocity and respect.
I love this comment because you wrote so much and said so little. Your comment proves me to be correct. You have a bunch of tiktoks that say that societal problems such as sexism, racism, etc are caused by moral failure. I pointed out that societal problems are caused by systemic structures.
You could read your entire comment on your local news stations and then go on to run as a Republican, or Democrat. This is because your comment is not a real critique of society, but empty populism.
Re-read this quotation in the voice of JD Vance, Marco Rubio, or Stephen Miller. I know you like to do accents, try it out. The quote would still function in exactly the same way, empty populism. Honestly, it sounds like Ben Shapiro. Try Ronald Reagan’s voice, who popularized the “welfare queen” narrative. The reason why this works is because the whole paragraph means nothing. It’s a fictional story.
I’m not a Christian. I don’t follow the bible. I’m using this quote as an example of how “character” is entirely subjective and therefore not a good way to critique society. Some people would say that it is bad character to be petty about how much soda was drank after you offered to share your soda. This bible passage would suggest that if someone drinks your soda, you should offer them more soda. Character is subjective.
Every person believes that they have good character and other people have bad character. Trump believes that he has good character. No person goes around and says “I have bad character and I like to do bad things”. If your worldview is “I’m against people who have bad character”, then you stand for nothing. That means nothing. “I’m against narcissism” means nothing. It’s like people who say “my politics are common sense”, it means nothing.
You don’t know what is going in other people’s minds. You don’t know who is a narcissist. Narcissism is immeasurable and immaterial.
Your situation is not an anomaly. You exist in a society and you are a product of the society that you exist within. Marx had a concept called ‘reserve army of labor’, which is how he explained unemployment and underemployment in a capitalist society. The concept is that unemployed people exist as a threat for the capitalist to impose on employed people. The capitalist threaten the worker “If you don’t work for less pay, then I’ll fire you and you’ll end up among the homeless.”
US is not just privileged, but imperialist. The reason that the US has more than other countries is because the US takes advantage other countries, something that the Democrat Party has historically enabled. The imperialism created the privilege, the privilege did not create the imperialism. US is an imperialist country but also has exploited underclasses withing it.
Your thinking is all backwards. As I said in my past comment, “The selfishness is the product of the action, not the enabler of the action.” Selfishness exists because of capitalism, not capitalism exists because of selfishness.
I like that you have tiktoks that say you are against sexism and toxic masculinity and all that stuff. The anti-drug video was ignorant, drugs are just medication and if you’re angry that people self-medicate in a country without access to healthcare, that’s just ignorant. It’s like you’re taking a math test and you somehow arrived at like 80% correct answers but the mathwork that you did to arrive at the answers is all wrong, so the teacher says “see me after class”, because it seems like you just copied from someone else instead of arriving at the answers yourself.
This entire comment is a perfect example of what I was talking about: you keep trying to force me into a political box that I don’t fit into, then acting shocked when I don’t accept the labels you’re assigning to me.
I couldn’t run as a Democrat and I couldn’t run as a Republican. Conservatives call me a liberal and liberals call me conservative. Both sizes attack me. Both sides unite against me when I actually start criticizing structural problems. That’s the funny part.
And to be absolutely clear, I would NEVER run as a Republican. The fact that you can read what I wrote and conclude that I could just go run as one says more about your political framework than it does about mine. Republican politics are fundamentally incompatible with what I believe. But so are plenty of contemporary Democratic positions. That’s the point you’re repeatedly missing.
You also keep using the word “moral” as though I’m making some grand theological argument about good people and bad people. I’m not. We’re talking about common sense, social responsibility and the consequences of people’s choices. Saying that some behavior is destructive isn’t the same thing as declaring somebody spiritually evil.
And the drug argument is especially funny considering that opposition to widespread drug use isn’t some a right-wing position. Even Lenin and Stalin understood the political usefulness of intoxicants in terms of social control and pacification. Then there’s the passive-aggressive little “Since you’re good at accents” routine.
And your “welfare queen” comparison completely misses the history you’re invoking. Republicans gutted, restructured and appropriated welfare into a system designed around political and tribal selectivity and business interests.
Most importantly, your entire argument assumes that recognizing individual responsibility means denying structural conditions. It starts on the individual level. Good people make good societies. Bad people destroy good societies.
There have been a lot of new accounts who come here to troll, personally I think you’re posting in good faith, maybe, but maybe being brand new and posting in mutual aid with this mix of views just makes it hard for people to trust the legitimacy of your posts because of the history of trolls on this instance. And like people pointing out when someone comes in saying they are a “Southern Democrat” most think of the segregationist type, and also any type of “democrat” is looked down upon here. We are primarily communists and anarchists, being called a democrat of any type would be like a slur for most here.
If you are coming here for actual political discussion I hope you aren’t discouraged by this intro. If you post more about actual viewpoints and not just who you are and your influences you might get a better response.
Well I haven’t really focused on my influences. With my post I just talked about my beliefs and the world I come from and I laid out real policy. I don’t identify with the modern Democratic Party. I don’t even vote anymore. I’m far left but I just consider it common sense. I believe in a standard of living, restorative justice and the Common Good and I’m going to keep making posts about what matters.
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