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Sarcastic bluesky post saying [time traveling back to 1933 to make sure to tell Germans to protest Hitler less vigorously so as not to alienate bougie centrists who want to go to brunch undisturbed, thus preventing the rise of fascism]
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Cenk is that you
Me going back in time to tell the Communists to stop calling the Social Democrats “social fascists” so they don’t both die in concentration camps:
Edit: I didnt even read the username, go to https://existentialcomics.com/ hit random and enjoy. Big fan of their work.
The SPD were murdering members of the KPD and collaborating with the police. The SPD sided with the Nazis over the communists. One of the prominent communists killed in the purge against the KPD was Rosa Luxemburg, which along with the other communists killed triggered firm opposition to working with the SPD on top of the SPD’s support for maintaining the capitalist system.
Speaking of Existential Comics, here they are making the case for why you should read Lenin.
goddamn do those replies on xitter miss the point
They do help prove it, though. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism and The State and Revolution are two of the most important and influential books in the entire Leftist canon, and both are extremely practical to this day, along with countless other works of Lenin.
The SPD used people like Erich Ludendorff to eliminate Communists. The SPD directly inherited the government from the Prussian King, maintained the interests of the German Empire, and killed Communist political leaders prior to the first election of the Weimar Republic.
The SPD government was the power structure that directly empowered, then acquiesced to multiple coup attempts by the monarchist anti-democratic right wing.
Now, the Russian Social Democrat Party, on the other hand, won their war. So it’s not necessarily the ‘Social Democrat’ part so much as the ‘Maintaining Imperial Power Structures’ part that the German SPD is faulted for.
The KPD also went on to try and do coalition with the Nazi right wing too, with likewise predictably terrible results.
You are by far the most annoying liberal on lemmy
Thanks, I try. See you in the camps.
Social Democrats? The ones that murdered Rosa and liebknecht?
Same as today they will turn their coat and collaborate, not a shred of doubt.
[Time traveling back to summer of 2024 to coddle the sensibilities of “centrists” when pointing out that there was no anti-genocide option on the ballot, and telling them that anti-genocide voters weren’t going to show up for genocide-lite]
Not voting isn’t saying “I don’t like either of these choices”.
It’s saying “I’m happy with either of these choices”.
And in any case, it wasn’t an objection or support of genocide that handed Trump power. It was apathy.
Multiple things handed Trump the presidency, none of them were the only thing, but “protest” non-voters were one of them.
for a “protest no vote” you can at least vote third party.
Hurts the main parties just as much, but they now know there are people willing to vote, just not for genocide.
Exactly, there were two anti war candidates running (Green and Libertarian for if you’re anti war but still hate the poor), but they got a similar number of votes to RFK Jr who had dropped out several months earlier, meaning you’re on par with people who not only wanted RFK to be president, but had also somehow missed the news that he’d joined Trump.
Meanwhile, over 80 million voters stayed at home. That’s more than voted for Harris or Trump.
See UKIP (now Reform) in the UK as an example of how not winning can still get you what you want. They got a bunch of votes (although nowhere near enough to win, or even get any MPs), but they got enough votes to scare one of the main two parties into going along with their scheme in order to get those voters back on side.
Now in this case what they wanted was fucking stupid right wing exceptionalist nonsense (leaving the EU) that neither of the main parties wanted because it was economic suicide, and the only reason Britain didn’t just implode and disappear off the map is because we did it really half arsed, and will hopefully rejoin the EU at some point down the line.
But you could do the same with left wing subjects as well. You just need people to vote for it, to show that they’re willing to fuck your numbers up for what they want.
I always use UKIP/brexit as an example of the power of voting third party.
1% vote increase for a third party is much more significant to the major parties than 1% staying at home and not voting
There’s also the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which is growing rapidly.
for a “protest no vote” you can at least vote third party.
Hurts the main parties just as much, but they now know there are people willing to vote, just not for genocide.
Maybe give a few shooting lessons while you’re there
the one time we wanted a Republican to lean a little more to the right
Lite?
It is a Simpsons reference, replace “Duff” with “genocide”
the simpsons didnt invent the concept of “lite” lol even the spelling can be found as early as the 1960s.
and the question probably wasnt “what does lite mean?”… theyre asking “how tf do you do a ‘lite’ genocide?”
Just a little as a treat
This isn’t even close to analogous, here is a better one.
“Real leftists” would have been more than happy to write in a niche candidate instead of ensuring that Hitler didn’t become Chancellor in the first place. And then they will have justified it by saying that Germany was going to fail anyway, and they rather have it happen sooner than later, and that none of the blood of the 6 million Jews about to be worked and gassed to death is on their hands.
It’s possible to have voted for the lesser evil and encourage vigorous protest.
It’s not a simple dichotomy.
Voted for Harris, Anti-riot
Voted third party/didn’t vote, Pro-Riot
Plenty of people Voted for Harris and are pro-riot. (Though those people tend to vote as harm reduction not with the naïve belief that simply just voting is enough).
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Ppl really forget we can do more than one thing
Easier to dismiss criticism when you can scapegoat it into a made of caricature that you disagree with on other things.
It’s not like the Nazis ever received the majority of the votes. Funny to see us blaming the votes of that time.
It’s a bit pedantic to say that Hitler rose to power without the majority because he only received 43.9% of the vote… especially considering that over 17 million people voted for him and the next most popular candidate only received 7 million votes.
That really only makes sense if you are reviewing the election through the lens of someone used to a two party system. If we are going to evaluate it as if it were a two party system and combine the right and left into two coalitions…the Nazi, Centre, DNVP, and BVP would make up nearly 26 million voters while the SPD and kpd would only make up nearly 12 million people.
Even though the Centre party was much more willing to work with the Nazi than the socialist, if we added their votes to the left coalition you’d still have 22m on the right and 16m on the left.
The only way you can really claim that the Nazi didn’t receive the majority of the vote is if you misinterpret The Weimar Republic as a direct democracy and not a Republic.
A bad analogy is a license to be pedantic.
It’s not a license to engage in historical revisionism. Like the myth of the clean wehrmacht, the notion that Hitler didn’t have the broad support of the majority of German citizens is an attempt to deny the culpability of everyday Germans from the war crimes they were collectively responsible for in WW2.
Off topic, but this is the first time I’ve seen an awful.systems account outside of its local communities.
Except in this case, the previous government had already killed 4 million Jews, and Hitler was only continuing the previous government’s policy of genocide.
No, in this case, the government would have killed 0 Jews, and instead provided weapons and ammunition to a long-time ally who suffered a brutal terrorist attack just a year prior and was in the middle of a bloody vengeance campaign that had gone way beyond the scope of neutralizing the enemy and had become a full blown extermination campaign in which Hitler was outright calling for the use of nuclear weapons and complete annihilation.
But, that far in to the weeds and the analogy breaks down because you’re just describing the very specific situation that happened back in November.
Israel was always going to do just want they wanted to unless someone stood up to them. That was never going to be Trump, nor was it going to be Harris, let’s be real here for a second. That sweet, sweet AIPAC cash is just too hard to say no to, and, frankly, Israel is a really charged topic that candidates would prefer to avoid. I find your distinction meaningless, it’s like handing an alcoholic booze while saying “nooo, please don’t drink it, it’s bad for you” only to turn around say that you didn’t help them destroy their life because you oh so gently reminded them that booze is bad for their health as you handed it to them. This is a cigarette company defense.
They’re doing it to Trump, just on Iran, because they know Trump isn’t going to meaningfully stand up to them, while still not wanting to get the US into full blown war. They’d be doing it to Harris too, because the DNC didn’t even trust her enough to let her run her own campaign, they sure as fuck weren’t going to let her run her own presidency. We’d probably have some DNC turbodonor or AIPAC mf as SecDef.
The genocide of Palestinians has been going on for nearly a century, it didn’t start after October 7th. Israel was founded on settler-colonialism and erasure of Palestinians, including stealing cultural symbols like food and claiming it as “Israeli.”
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Nah, sorry but this is an absolutely horrendous take. Modern Israel is fundamentally an early settler-colonial project, and thus is based on genocide. The only solution is a single, secular and democratic Palestine, with minority protections. There isn’t anything genetic about the Palestinian/Settler conflict, in fact a large number of Israelis are from the US and Europe, not actually born in Israel.
Kamala would never stem the flow of support for Israel, because Israel’s role in the broader US Empire is as a mega-US millitary base in the Middle East, to keep oil flowing and pressure the Middle East into conceding to US interests above all. Kamala knew this, Biden knew this, Trump knows this too. None of them ever would have stopped the gravy train, the US depends on it economically. The loss of Israel would be a devastating blow for US soft power in the region, hence Biden’s endless public critique while privately sending everything necessary. The difference with Trump is that it’s all above the table and public facing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_(region)
Nah, sorry but this is an absolutely horrendous take.
You don’t get to call truth an"absolutely horrendous take", but it’s kinda the only tool the proxy-trump voters have left to save a little face, so whatever floats your boat.
What, exactly, does linking a Wikipedia page dispute about what I’ve said? What “truth?” I called your analysis a horrendous take because it was, Israel pre-October 7 was commiting genocide, and was commiting genocide even back when it was founded three quarters of a century ago. Kamala would never oppose Israel. I also don’t like the insinuation that I’m a Trump voter, I never voted for Trump nor any republican, ever. Calling your take bad wasn’t my “only tool,” I dismantled your argument that capes for Zionist genocide of Palestinians.
Here’s some good reading for you, since you love linking articles:
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Hitler came to power because the majority couldn’t settle on a non-Hitler candidate. Now you’re saying we should do the same thing.
I don’t know what they’re saying. I’m saying we all agreed on what to do with Nazis 80 years ago and that we should continue to do that. You have a problem?
Uh… No? There was no two-party system in Weimar Germany what are you even talking about? Hitler came to power because conservatives and centrists prefered him over the left. Like, it was Hindenburg who appointed Hitler as chancellor.
The KPD under Thälmann’s leadership regarded the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as an adversary and the party adopted the position that the social democrats were “social fascists”.
Thälmann’s KPD thus fought the SPD as their main political enemy, acting according to the Comintern policy, which declared social democrats to be “social fascists”. This made it difficult for the two leftist parties to work together against the emergence of Adolf Hitler. The KPD under Thälmann declared that “fighting fascism means fighting the SPD just as much as it means fighting Hitler and the parties of Brüning.” Thälmann declared in December 1931 that “some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest” of social democrats.
The left preferred Hitler over the liberals. At least they got to feel smug as they were shot, knowing they never voted for anything less that perfection.
Yeah, it’s not like the SPD would ever send death squads against the left, right?
…right?
I really hope not, but maybe you may know more than I about the long boycott of liberals by the Communists who saw liberals as worse than Hitler.
Fuck, the liberals must have been actively sending communists, LBTQ+ people, Travellers, Poles, and Jews to death camps, just like Adolf did. Surely the Communists wouldn’t miss the forest for the trees when they refused to work with the liberals, Right???
Right…?
Right…?
Not voting for a fucking liberal compared to the fascist running worked out in their favor during the 1930s, right…?
Holy shit. So, you just read the first chapter of any history lesson and just assume that’s all there is to the story? This is like something someone would write as a comedy bit? Are you just fucking with us?
Yeah. You got me, the KPD and the SDP never refused to work together. It’s all just a joke, and there are certainly no parallels to the modern day! (Please don’t read a book that says otherwise)
Congrats on your cutting sense of satire, here I was thinking I was just a silly goose helplessly watching history repeat yet a-fucking-gain, the left ripping eachother apart while literal fascists take power.
Fuck, you’re stupid.
God you’re insufferable. If you want to discuss and debate things don’t talk down on others like this.
…Wait, you genuinely don’t know why the SPD was so hated by the KPD? Like, you’re not being obtuse rethorically, you actually don’t know?
What, the not-literal-Hitler groups didn’t get along??? Holy shit they actually tried to tear eachother to shreds for electoral gain instead of focusing on the dude ready to literally planning to shoot them both in the head??? Noooo!!! Surely politicians would never hammer wedges! This could never happen again!
Wow wow wow wowser. I really hope the SDP was sending homosexuals, liberals, communists, jews, minorities, etc, to camps, or the Communists would be utter fucking morons for literally equating the Social Democrats with Nazism. As they literally did.
Fuck me, people who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it, while people who do know history are condemned to watch everyone else repeat it. Get me off this ride.
Ahahah, holy shit, you genuinely have no idea!?! Good God, this explains so much…
I think you need to work on recognizing when you’re in over your head.
Look up Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht
The ignorance of history is strong with this one.
liberals
Who do you call liberals? That term wasn’t present back then and there was no party where that term would apply.
And the communists were all for killing “capitalist jews”. Here’s a quote from Ruth Fischer when she was leader of the KPD:
„Tretet die Juden-Kapitalisten nieder, hängt sie an die Laterne, zertrampelt sie“
“Kick the Jew-Capitalists down, hang them from the lanterns, trample them”
None of the parties back then map one-to-one to modern parties, and applying our current understanding and sensibilities to the political system in Germany back then without any kind of understanding just directly leads to misinterpretation.
Especially if you don’t understand the political system of the Weimar Republic and just view that through the lens of a two-party system.
I think that’s a massive mischaracterization of the elections in 33. Hitler mainly rose to power because the traditional nationalist party and centrist party thought they could control him and use his popularity to ward off a coalition from leftist and unionists. The centrists were among the first parties to vote in favor of the Enabling act, which granted legislative powers to Hitler’s government.
It’s a bit pedantic to say that Hitler rose to power without the majority because he only received 43.9% of the vote… especially considering that over 17 million people voted for him and the next most popular candidate only received 7 million votes.
That really only makes sense if you are reviewing the election through the lens of someone used to a two party system. If we are going to evaluate it as if it were a two party system and combine the right and left into two coalitions…the Nazi, Centre, DNVP, and BVP would make up nearly 26million voters while the SPD and kpd would only make up nearly 12 million people.
Even though the Centre party was much more willing to work with the Nazi than the SPD, if we added their votes to the left coalition you’d still have 22m on the right and 16m on the left.
Blackshirts and Reds - Michael Parenti - Ch 1
In Germany, a similar pattern of complicity between fascists and capitalists emerged. German workers and farm laborers had won the right to unionize, the eight-hour day, and unemployment insurance. But to revive profit levels, heavy industry and big finance wanted wage cuts for their workers and massive state subsidies and tax cuts for themselves.
During the 1920s, the Nazi Sturmabteilung or SA, the brown-shirted storm troopers, subsidized by business, were used mostly as an antilabor paramilitary force whose function was to terrorize workers and farm laborers. By 1930, most of the tycoons had concluded that the Weimar Republic no longer served their needs and was too accommodating to the working class. They greatly increased their subsidies to Hitler, propelling the Nazi party onto the national stage. Business tycoons supplied the Nazis with generous funds for fleets of motor cars and loudspeakers to saturate the cities and villages of Germany, along with funds for Nazi party organizations, youth groups, and paramilitary forces. In the July 1932 campaign, Hitler had sufficient funds to fly to fifty cities in the last two weeks alone.
In that same campaign the Nazis received 37.3 percent of the vote, the highest they ever won in a democratic national election. They never had a majority of the people on their side. To the extent that they had any kind of reliable base, it generally was among the more affluent members of society. In addition, elements of the petty bourgeoisie and many lumpenproletariats served as strong-arm party thugs, organized into the SA storm troopers. But the great majority of the organized working class supported the Communists or Social Democrats to the very end.
In the December 1932 election, three candidates ran for president: the conservative incumbent Field Marshal von Hindenburg, the Nazi candidate Adolph Hitler, and the Communist party candidate Ernst Thaelmann. In his campaign, Thaelmann argued that a vote for Hindenburg amounted to a vote for Hitler and that Hitler would lead Germany into war. The bourgeois press, including the Social Democrats, denounced this view as “Moscow inspired.” Hindenburg was re-elected while the Nazis dropped approximately two million votes in the Reichstag election as compared to their peak of over 13.7 million.
True to form, the Social Democrat leaders refused the Communist party’s proposal to form an eleventh-hour coalition against Nazism. As in many other countries past and present, so in Germany, the Social Democrats would sooner ally themselves with the reactionary Right than make common cause with the Reds.3 Meanwhile a number of right-wing parties coalesced behind the Nazis and in January 1933, just weeks after the election, Hindenburg invited Hitler to become chancellor.
Upon assuming state power, Hitler and his Nazis pursued a politico-economic agenda not unlike Mussolini’s. They crushed organized labor and eradicated all elections, opposition parties, and independent publications. Hundreds of thousands of opponents were imprisoned, tortured, or murdered. In Germany as in Italy, the communists endured the severest political repression of all groups.
Here were two peoples, the Italians and Germans, with different histories, cultures, and languages, and supposedly different temperaments, who ended up with the same repressive solutions because of the compelling similarities of economic power and class conflict that prevailed in their respective countries. In such diverse countries as Lithuania, Croatia, Rumania, Hungary, and Spain, a similar fascist pattern emerged to do its utmost to save big capital from the impositions of democracy.4
Oooh, and the divided, atomized left that couldn’t agree with itself to save its life (and would occassionally actually physically shoot at each other).
This is a great analogy, actually.
The Right always votes for the GOP candidate, and the GOP candidate is the guy who wins the primaries. Most folks don’t vote in the primaries, so the most extreme guy almost always wins.
Meanwhile, there are people on the Left who hate AOC because she hasn’t pistol whipped Nancy Pelosi.
It’s genuinely depressing, years of “Huh, this feels like Weimar Germany” thought turn into “Liberals won’t get my vote this election”.
Fuck me, people who don’t know history are damned to repeat it, and people who do know history are damned to watch everyone else repeat it.
Fuck me, people who don’t know history are damned to repeat it, and people who do know history are damned to watch everyone else repeat it.
The irony in you saying this is fucking painful.
History repeats itself.
