This is definitely the lamest attempted AOC dunk thread I’ve seen yet. Why do you even care? What is this meant to prove?
- Get asked an obvious trap question by a pro-capitalist journalist who’s at least flirted with the CIA
- Give an answer obviously intended to soften Americans’ rabid opposition to even the word “socialism”
- Get ripped by online leftists for not going full “Stalin committed zero crimes,” which we all know to be the most effective way to move CNN-watching libs left
You’re operating under the false assumption that Social-Democrats are in any way shape or form allies of socialism instead of the imperialist capitalist classcollaborators and enemies within they have consistently been since they were forced to abandon Marxism due to the success of 1917
Give an answer obviously intended to soften Americans’ rabid opposition to even the word “socialism”
If “softening” the word socialism to the point it means capitalism with a welfare state I’d rather she didn’t attempt to soften and coopt socialism and remove its revolutionary content
Get ripped by online leftists for not going full “Stalin committed zero crimes,” which we all know to be the most effective way to move CNN-watching libs left
Firstly, Stalin did commit crimes (not shooting Kruschev, taking the moral high ground in 1925 when Kamenev and Zinoviev wanted to assassinate Trotsky etc.), secondly “moving left” is infantile. AOCs politics wouldn’t be out of step with most of post-war Labour party in UK.
And they ran the British empire just as well as the tories and why AOC capitulates on imperialism exactly the same
You’re operating under the false assumption that Social-Democrats are in any way shape or form allies of socialism
They self-identify as democratic socialists, not social democrats, a distinction Bernie made a point to draw. Coupled with credible opposition to capitalism, and with the necessity of not writing off everyone but my five True Leftist friends, they’re certainly worth counting as allies, at least for the moment.
“moving left” is infantile
Moving people left is literally the only way we’re going to get enough leftists to do anything. The vast majority of people aren’t going to wake up one day and decide to be a communist. The vast majority of Americans – steeped from birth in hardcore anticommunism – won’t even decide to be a communist as soon as they read communist literature. the vast majority of Americans won’t even consider reading communist literature to begin with. We have to walk people down the path. That means getting them to take one step left, then another, then another. Each step helps.
AOC capitulates on imperialism
AOC has had zero meaningful interaction with U.S. imperialism, and has had exactly zero real opportunity to stop any part of it. She’s a first-term representative who doesn’t even sit on any foreign policy committees. Criticizing her over something she’s had no power to change is needlessly pessimistic, and is not the way we should be treating the very few people who are moving in the right direction.
If AOC is a Democratic Socialist, why didn’t she point to Chile instead of these dogshit imperialist nations?
Stalin and Mao’s popularity has risen in recent years in tandem with the rising popularity of socialism. It’s obvious you don’t need to throw the prime examples of socialism under the bus to spread class consciousness, so why alienate actual communists and third-word leftists for seemingly no benefit?
Stalin and Mao’s popularity has risen in recent years
This is an extremely online take. The amount of people who will even say “you know, Stalin and Mao were good on balance” is small – even here, you’ll find some opposition to that. This isn’t throwing anyone under the bus, either; it’s sidestepping the subject of actual existing socialist countries altogether.
why alienate actual communists and third-word leftists for seemingly no benefit?
The benefit is getting significant numbers of people to soften their opposition to leftist ideas, and that’s absolutely crucial because we’re going nowhere unless we get tens of millions of more Americans to become leftists. American communists are already alienated from AOC – look around this thread – so there’s no real cost to this, either. Similarly, third-world leftists, being outside the country, aren’t going to be able to help bring socialism to the United States.
It’s not just AOC that’s alienating us, it’s people like you who defend her. You are creating a synthetic American “left” that is anti-communist and detached from the global proletarian movement.
How well did that work the last 50 times you yanks tried it? When will you learn solidarity?
Well she shouldn’t say things in an inflammatory and obtuse way, but there are ways to frame things better. Think to yourself how Richard Wolff would have answered this question. It still appeals to libs and it still defends socialism without distorting what socialism is.
I mean what was she supposed to say? Doubt she could debunk the fucking Holodomor in one interview.
I don’t like her don’t get me wrong, but I don’t get all these “muh progressive Dems aren’t stanning Lenin on MSNBC!” owns. Yeah no shit it’d be career suicide.
Succdems need to just stop calling themselves socialists and be honest about their social chauvinism
In a country where one of the two major political parties calls Joe Biden a Marxist, the problem is definitely not what AOC and company call themselves.
They are parts of the problem, Republicans aren’t the only ones calling everything socialism
Are y’all like, chuds who bought into Fox News propaganda that AOC was literally the next Stalin and then the only thing that changed was that you started thinking that was good? It’s baffling to me how this site keeps getting completely shocked that AOC isn’t something she never claimed to be.
I think it’s a fascist plot to undermine the left by shifting the narrative.
Universal healthcare, free higher education, and labor rights? Nah, Stalin did nothing wrong, guillotine everyone who owns private property, and all mainstream news is CIA disinfo.
In terms of framing, don’t be surprised when the next wave of false flag domestic terrorism is going to be dressed in red hammers and sickles.
Universal healthcare, free higher education, and labor rights? Nah, Stalin did nothing wrong, guillotine everyone who owns private property, and all mainstream news is CIA disinfo.
This sort of shift is especially sus when it’s coupled with dismissing all progress towards those first few things as not worth bothering with. When you can’t even muster a “critical support” for the likes of AOC, that’s an issue.
Its equally shocking that socialists should want to expose and resist liberals coopting “socialism” to divert people from building actual socialism into supporting a bourgeois imperialist party :thinkin-lenin:
I wouldn’t mind as much if we had more variety. Just seems like AOC lives rent free in a lot of people’s heads.
There should be a rule that for every post dunking on AOC you also have to dunk on a random congressperson who’s not in the squad.
This is some real “why won’t you also talk about how bad Republicans are” shit
I’m with you on this one. I don’t know why some folks expect her to start stanning ML states when neither she (nor Bernie!) have ever painted themselves as anything other than social democrats, for all practical purposes.
Like literally, what would make you think either AOC or Bernie are socialists other than the label they occasionally use for themselves? 99.9% of their words and 100% of their actions point to social democracy, and they don’t pretend otherwise. And you know what, I think that’s ok. Personally I think social democracy represents the outer left limit of what can be accomplished via electoralism in the US.
(btw I will always try and include Bernie whenever AOC is mentioned because even though their politics are exactly identical AOC seems to get a lot more hate for some reason…
I think Rashida is basically AOC, but with better foreign policy. Still not good foreign policy, but at least pro-Palestine and more staunchly anti-war.
Ilhan is also good, but I feel like she’s had some yikes takes, though I can’t think of what exactly off the top of my head.
All of them are still fairly pro democratic party in a way Sanders clearly wasn’t. They all tend to exist in a space somewhere between Sanders and Warren rather than to his left. This said, Cori Bush is absolutely to left of squad 1.0, Nina Turner who had some worse politics than most of these folks previously is also far less afraid of attacking the Democrats head on than AOC/Ilhan/Rashida.
The Squad was clearly more closely mentored by Jayapal than by Sanders, although I do also imagine a big part of this comes from the fact that they are members of the house and not the Senate and it’s much easier to have independence as a Senator due to their procedural rules.
