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Zohran Mamdani won three US House of Representatives seats last week. Claire Valdez in NY-7, Brad Lander in NY-10, and Darializa Avila Chevalier in NY-13 each won the Democratic primary after being endorsed by Mamdani, knocking-off two incumbants in the process. These are all 80-20 Democratic districts, so there is no realistic chance of any of them losing in the November.
Darializa Avila Chevalier is the one still making headlines a week later. She is, as far as anyone can tell, an actual communist. Rumors are that she personally founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest when she was a student there in 2016. Her stance on policing? She's against it.
Center-left politicos are currently melting down that someone like this won and is being accepted by the party apparatus. Credit to them for denouncing socialism I guess, but did they not know who their base is? Did they completely forget all of those "defund the police" chants from 2020? Did they not know that those people vote Democrat?
Some people want to kick Chevalier out of the party, bless their hearts. This wouldn't work even if it were feasable. Democrats need votes from leftists to be competative nationally. A party at war with its own base cannot stand.
Also in the news, Scott Wiener gets harassed out of a trans pride parade.
I can't find the full version of the video, but there's a bit where someone says something like "You've done a lot for the gay community, but...", where the lot is stuff like protecting 24 year olds who have sex with 14 year olds.
THAT GUY isn't far left enough anymore.
It's worth noting that even the San Francisco subreddit mostly thinks that harassing Wiener like that was a bad thing.
The people who genuinely think that this harassment was a good thing are a small minority in the overall "leftist" coalition.
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The vocalisation doesn't sound sincere at all to me. It sounds like a right-wing activist LARPing as a leftist.
The amazing thing is how the extremists really do sound like the conservative caricature of the lefties. "Surely they can't be like that in reality/Whoops..." The lead-in to the "but we hate you!" screaming by the maker of the video was 'in your wildest dreams' stuff:
"Scott, I think your legislation on trans issues and your legislation specifically protecting queers on sex offender registry is fantastic. Like, I really applaud you for that and I think you deserve to be here for that".
You did not just say that. Tell me you didn't. Imagine a GOP politician getting praised for protecting people on sex offender registries 🤣
(There was also criticism of his housing policy and aligning with YIMPYs (sic) before launching into the stuck record you've been terrible you've been terrible you've been terrible stuff).
Uh, yeah, because a lot of that isn't conservative caricature. Sometimes conservatives come up with a strawman position that it turns out the left actually holds, but much of the time conservatives are actually merely NOTICING.
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AIUI, there is talk of a problem among the Republican campaign staffers that it's hard to do attack ads because people think literal descriptions of Democrat rhetoric and policies are insane exaggerations. E.g. the "Yes, fuck you, we literally mean no more police at all" candidate for the House.
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Clearly a crack squadron of secret false-flag right wingers are attending protests solely to push random internal schism stuff
It's not about pushing internal schism stuff. It's about trying to tar and feather the Jews and any pro-Israeli sentiment as pedophile-coded. And yes, that reeks of rightoid mentality. Leftists do not think or talk that way.
The leftists don't passionately oppose pedophilia because doing so is low-class and right-wing coded, so just like they don't oppose Israel or the Jews because doing so is low-class and right-wing coded. The way the left phrases these things is they're against sexual abuse of the vulnerable and against the colonialism of marginalised groups like Palestinians.
It was the leftists screaming anti-Semitism, my friend. You can't No True Scotsman your way out of this.
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Leftists do passionately oppose pedophilia- often defined in nonstandard ways, but still.
As usual, it's who, whom. Leftists are totally fine with George Takei getting introduced to the wonderful world of gay sex at 14 by a camp counselor, but God forbid a man in his thirties should date a college girl!
Gay sex is different from straight sex, so it’s not a double standard at all- just bad values.
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Yeah. So much of the Epstein stuff and I'd argue the whole '17.9999999999 years sick fuck' manifestation is more Left-wing than Right
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Which leftists do you know? The ones I'm in circles with love talking about "the Epstein class".
In the same way they love body- and homo-shaming when it can target the outgroup. "The Epstein Class" feels like a good soldier to send to war - same reason it gets spammed by twitter posters from third world countries with mass, normalized child rape.
Most of those same leftists will turn around and say it's a human right for 15 year olds to have access to books that tell them how to get on Grindr, even though that sort of thing is almost exactly what Epstein actually did.
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I think that's as strong evidence that leftists care about opposing pedophilia as Republicans' calling out voter fraud in recent elections they lost is evidence that they care about opposing voter fraud. These are just easy weapons lying around to pick up and throw at enemies, nothing more, nothing less. That's even before getting into the fact that, almost certainly, Epstein and his ilk account for less than 0.1% of all pedophilic crime that happened during the time period when they were (are?) active and are almost certainly dwarfed by activities done by much lower class people that those same people conspicuously try to ignore or downplay.
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"The Epstein Class" is a right-wing shibboleth. An actual leftist would say "the capitalist class" or "the bourgeoisie."
While they're often talking about largely the same group, the worldviews are quite different: one world model runs on sexual blackmail, and the other on asymmetric bargaining power enabled by control of capital.
In my hard left coastal city, blues LOVE talking about the Epstein class in exactly those words
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Have you been on social media in the last year? Redditors love their Epstein references
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Leftists (meaning, here, Democrats and affiliated groups) are very eager to call out the Epstein class and variations of it that do center specifically on sexual immorality; this can be seen in everything from Reddit comments to statements by national Democratic politicians. Though it's less a belief in a conspiracy of sexual blackmail driving history and more a belief in the inherent corrupt perversions of the rich.
"Actual leftists" using your more materialist framing exist but have essentially no power.
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Some Dem politicians that have used the phrase "Epstein class" include Jamaal Bowman, Graham Platner, Jon Ossoff and Ro Khanna who, according to this, coined the term. New York City DSA, at least, also uses the term.
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I saw a longer clip from this recording with a pretty epically ridiculous line. Paraphrasing:
"You can't call yourself QUEER if you don't support Gaza!"
O__O
It's just another variation of "injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere" applied absolutely and with minimal thinking. Exact same phenomenon as anthropogenic global warming - i.e. "climate justice" - activists being virulently pro-Palestine, to the extent that Greta Thunberg, the biggest celebrity to come out of the anti-AGW movement, is now more in the news for her anti-colonialization-by-Israel activism these days.
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It made me laugh. I don't like Mr. Wiener so seeing him hoist on the petard of the exact same protests etc. levied against conservatives, this time by the T part of the LGBT alliance beshrewing him (during Pride Month, even!), was deeply satisfying to my worst instincts. Alas. Let me weep for my sins.
There's always some entertainment in seeing somebody get Rowling'd but enabling people to die on the particular absurd focus on Palestine is probably not a good idea
Palestine maybe not, but ol' Scotty there could not do enough for the trans cause - he co-authored that family law bill seeking to include so that "if you don't affirm your child's new gender, you are a MONSTER and should HAVE NO RIGHTS you horrible ABUSIVE BIGOT and we are gonna get the judges to TAKE CUSTODY AWAY FROM YOU for the child's safety" (it got watered down in subsequent readings) so I am enjoying seeing him get the same "boo hiss fuck off we hate you" treatment he was happy to dish out to those who did not hold the Right Think Opinions On Dead Kids, such as parents who might have wondered "hey, how come my son is now a daughter? can we talk about this?"
(I know custody cases tend to be a steaming mess where kids are pawns in the parents' battle to destroy each other, and throwing changed gender orientation of a minor after the parents split up into the mix is just dumping chum in the water, but come off it Scotty).
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From a leftist perspective, Scott Weiner has a questionable record on Israel. He’s funded by J-Street and supports providing Israel with “defensive” weapons.
Given the opinions of the base, one really would expect the left-flank of the party to take a harder line on this.
tl;dr: the left is in an existential crisis because of Israel.
I wanted to write a post on the recent shifts in lefty rhetoric. The big one is 'This isn't Woke 1.0 anymore'
To define a few terms for convenience sake. The 'base' is the politically active far left portion. The 'establishment' is the more 'moderate' one. Popular examples of viewpoint representatives of the 'base' online are Vaush and BadEmpanada. Popular examples of the establishment are Contrapoints, PhilosophyTube and Destiny.
The big shift from the base can be described thusly: Performative woke stuff is out. You can no longer signal that you are in favor of soft social causes that are otherwise irrelevant to broader critiques of capitalism and colonialism or similar lefty theology. This might hold interesting connotations for transgenders as an untouchable priestly class in leftism. But in practice this just means that there have been some genuine changes at the grass roots level. And they are putting Palestine first as a purity test. The base is making this adjustment due to a series of genuinely devastating political losses.
You can say it begins with the Biden admin not standing up to Israel after Oct.7. The base got to feel what it's like when their representatives and institutions don't go along with them. This was a thing the base really cared about. But the establishment ignored for, at the time, seemingly no good reason. Come election season, Harris doubled down on this 'don't ask don't tell' position on Israeli overreach. This made the base even madder. If folks remember a few weeks back, the infamous 'Election Autopsy Report' that the DNC didn't want to release, the base was projecting whole heartedly that they lost because Harris was soft on Israel-Palestine. So not only was the base getting ignored, they also believed they were losing because of it.
To make matters worse, Trump started doing things this term. DOGE, along with the USAID thing happened. It was the first sign that the left as a whole was starting to lose grasp on just what was going on. The first symbolic defeat they've felt in a long time. The right was genuinely running a victory lap waving around all the ridiculous lefty causes that had been receiving millions of dollars. Hating Musk and lighting Teslas on fire was, as far as political activism goes, ineffective at actually achieving anything, even if just rhetorically or cathartically. Alongside this ran legislative defeats like the passing of the OBBBA and the ICE apocalypse alongside Trump admin actions against colleges and campuses. Those were principally establishment defeats, but the base got to pay the price.
Lets put ourselves in the shoes of the base. After having been gassed up through propaganda that Trump was going to make the sky fall down, there are now people from their ranks that are dead. Some jailed for a long time, and others permanently damaged, either physically, mentally or professionally from participating in lefty activism, with nothing to show for it. At the same time the base has not just been losing internally to the establishment, but they've also been watching the establishment lose externally to the right.
What's worse, they're now competing for space online against the likes of Theo Von, Tucker Carlson and similar, who have been filling the moderate 'I like healthcare and dislike Israel' void on the right/center. At the same time they have no leverage over the more extreme right wingers that occupy X and alternative streaming sites. This is a far cry from the 2017-2020 years where the left could exert pressure on the media landscape at will. A clear example of their loss of power.
Now, why can't the establishment just mend things with the base? Why are they huffing and puffing about the extremists in their own backyard? Why can't they give them institutional cover like they once did? Outside of the right genuinely becoming stronger due to a lack of censorship, there is a one word answer: Israel. The establishment can't compromise any more on Israel. They have to vote yes when Israel asks for arms. They have to stand up and clap for Netanyahu. And the base is redefining itself around the singular cause of Israel bombing children in Gaza being a bad thing.
There's no more intersectionalism. There no more 'sit down a black woman is speaking'. The base has slowly realized that organizing around words and ideas is stupid. You need something concrete as a barometer. And they are slowly enforcing that the actual program is not gay sex, protesting for black criminals or men in womens sports, but dead children in Gaza. And if you don't get with the program, regardless of who you are or identify as, you can be dismissed on those terms.
Will this last? I don't know. The establishment has usually managed to reign everything in come election year. But it might be that with changing demographics on the ground, and the reckless actions of Israel, that the American left is genuinely swirling down the drain of a third world communist toilet because they can't say no to infinity immigration and Israel.
The left was a coalition of jewish oligarchs who wanted to flood the west with migrants and dismantle western civilization and leftist who want the same thing. The issue is the Jewish elite have no interest in dismantling wall street and are hard core Jewish ethnonationalist. Uniting a principled leftist with Jeffery Epstein's pro Zionist billionaire friends over their united hate for straight white people was doomed to failure in the long run. Their fundamental values and motivations are incompatible.
Yeah, there was a lot of stuff that could be said that I didn't to not get banned. But it's a very interesting dynamic compared to on the right.
See you on the other side king.
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Oh look. It’s that time again. And again. Yeah.
Given your continued flagrant violations of the rules, we are banning you permanently.
Have a nice day.
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Why?
Because they have power and can't afford to be that stupid.
Israel may be unpopular, but Palestine is genuinely run by an evil regime that would behead every American if they had the power to do so. And it's not just a bad regime, its popular. If you have power you can smile nicely at the "queers for Palestine" people, but you still have to keep the reality in your head that not only would those people be beheaded in Palestine, you probably would too
So the establishment is widening a rift in their own party because... The evil Palestinian regime would otherwise behead every American if given the chance? Which would somehow be more likely to happen if the dems stopped bending the knee for Israel?
I can see the vague emotional outline for 'Palestinians are radical muslims and that flies on the face of lefty progressivism' but trying to connect that to any genuine geopolitical reality feels like a real stretch.
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Granting for the sake of argument that this is true, there are lots of groups in the world that meet that criterion (the easiest example for reductio ad absurdum probably being any assorted Islamist militia in Africa), without the US subordinating every other national interest to supporting whoever happens to be fighting against them.
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I’m not asking why these Dem leaders are not taking a clear stand with Hamas against Israel. I’m asking what perceived tangible political risk is there in them parting ways with the Israel Lobby and refusing to yield to them anymore.
All the people with money and brains seem to still like Israel. Or at least understand that it is a significantly lesser evil than the regional alternatives.
Paul Graham and Nassim Taleb would suggest otherwise.
Regardless, it seems more like the people with money who like Israel are willing to basically devote their entire fortunes towards supporting Israel whereas the people with money who don't like Israel have other priorities.
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The voter base hates Israel, but the donor base still generally likes Israel (at least the theoretical concept of Israel, not necessarily the current government). Imagine the political blowback from pissing off
The Media,
Big Tech,
Big Finance, and
Lawyers
All at the same time.
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They’re fine with letting Arab Muslim refugees into America. Why would they have objections to letting Arab Muslim refugees into Israel?
They probably have an Aversion to seeing lots of beheadings
If they had such a strong aversion to beheadings they wouldn't have enthusiastically supported Al Qaeda taking over Syria
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I’m also curious. The establishment has chosen to do this but I haven’t seen any particular reason why they would have to do it. They just seem to really want to do it.
If you don't know why, it's probably old and complicated and involves real national interest, which is why you don't know about it.
So, for instance, as to why we "have" to sell Israel weapons, it's because that was part of the deal Carter brokered for peace between Egypt and Israel, a peace that has lasted nearly fifty years now. We also "have" to sell Egypt like 80% of what we sell Israel. That's the deal, from the Realpolitik '70s. Egypt leaves the Soviet Union as main sponsor, Israel leaves France as main military sponsor, and they buy American and agree not to use the US guns on each other.
So, we don't have to do shit. We can withold weapons from the Israelis, but that scotches the peace deal with Egypt which puts the Suez in play (and so on down the line of international consequences). Also, the weapons we provide tend to be the most targeted and high-tech. The Israelis make much of their own hardware, and are plenty rich enough to get reasonable options from elsewhere except for our best stuff. The idea that the US military hardware is the only thing between Israel and defeat is ridiculous and ahistorical. US military hardware is what stands between the Palestinians and an Israel that doesn't have Patriot missiles, but can build their own artillery. Not sure that's better for anyone.
Which is why we keep voting to do it.
Well, supplying Israel with weapons led to the Houthis blocking the Red Sea so...
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I think a lot of people don't realize (or don't want to acknowledge) that if Israel were to be unable to effectively defend its population from terrorist rockets and mortars and missles, their reponse wouldn't be capitulation or negotiation. It would be annihilation. As it would be for pretty much any polity in existence whose civilians are being relentlessly targeted and killed by a militarily inferior opponent.
As it stands, Israel has the breathing room to be more judicious in their attacks, even if it really doesn't look that way to the uninformed, who call use of more than one JDAM "indiscriminate and unproportional carpet bombing". But without the Iron Dome, I think we'd be reminded what carpet bombing really looks like, and I wouldn't blame them (or anyone else) in their operational situation.
Israel has a population equivalent to the population of Denmark if we subtract Palestinians and ultra orthodox. Israel's natural resources are meager. If Israel was subjected to the same sanctions as Russia they would fold like a house of cards. There is no way Israel can be sustained while having hostile relations to all its neighbours and while being sanctioned by the west.
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