3 out of 4 of those are monarchies AOC
AOC, are you seeking to become an actual queen
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.
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…
Fuck anyone defending this. Idc how deeply propagandized the American people are, 100s of thousands of people are dying, millions are losing their livelihoods and our social fabric is crumbling while China, Vietnam, Venezuala, Cuba, etc. got a handle on the pandemic within months and are having fucking pool parties. If you’re not using this moment to make the case that what the American people think they know about how foreign countries work is bullshit, you are completely fucking useless.
Some real clown hours when you see leftists talking about the 4chan shit of “hiding your power level”
“hiding your power level” can only work when you are already perfectly fine operating within the capitalist-imperialist paradigm which most fascists are A-OK with.
Meaning “hiding your power level” is a perfectly good strategy as your goal is to get some sliver of power and do stuff like cut bus lines to black communities to impoverish them (by stopping them able to travel for work into white communities) or sign crime bills designed to incarcerate blacks
The last 150 years of the labour movement has proved that if you pretend to be an opportunist and social chauvinist… You end up an opportunist and social chauvinist
Communists openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”
-Karl Marx
I think you’re underestimating how fucking propagandized the American people are. At best she could get away with saying some mildly positive shit about Vietnam cuz they’re our allies, a single good word about Cuba, China or the DPRK and she’d lose her next election for sure and the FBI would probably leave a bag of coke and some child porn in her apartment.
This isn’t a defense of AOC, she can fuck herself, but honestly I don’t think her suddenly “revealing her power level” (assuming she actually is more left than she lets on (she’s not)) would achieve Jack. Everyone would hate her, she’d become ruined and irrelevant in a year and maybe even in jail. It’d achieve nothing for her besides scoring some points with us, and achieve nothing for anyone else.
Just take the 3rd Worldist Pill and hope Xi invades us like I do.
No offense intended, but I feel like this is basically doomer talk with slightly more nuance. Not that the revolution can’t or won’t start in the global south - in fact, that’s pretty much the only way I see it happening - but the idea that we can do nothing but sit and wait until then just seems too cynical to me. We should put in the work to build socialism at home, even if we know we’re going to fail, because that’s how we set the groundwork for the next generation.
Look how hard they went in on Bernie because he said that Castro’s literacy programs worked. He was still talking about how much of an evil dictator Castro was, but they jumped down his throat either way. Literacy became bad overnight.
AOC is not, never has been, and likely never will be a communist. But she is the far left of US politics, and should be half-embraced and pulled left by half supporters who can point out how dumb these takes are. That’s basically the definition of critical support.
Can’t believe AOC is a lib? She doesn’t want to resurrect Lenin?
She might be actually ideologically committed to the “nordic model” honestly
The strategy is clearly to soften people’s hardcore opposition to even the mere mention of socialism. This is the subtext of the exchange:
Q: By socialism, do you mean scary, evil stuff that has been the target of an unparalleled anticommunist propaganda machine for decades? Please say yes; doing so is one of the few things that could end your political career.
A: Haha fuck off with the bait, I’m talking about stuff people generally view positively, especially when it comes to socialized healthcare, because, you know, healthcare is currently the biggest entrypoint into leftism.
I don’t know what power level she’s hiding, but it doesn’t really matter. The intent is good, and the answer does more to advance us towards socialism than a discussion of how to classify the Soviet or Cuban government.
I never really understand this strategy because we’re going to get called socialists anyway so long as we’re not ardent, steel eyed Republican voters with American flag tattoos on our foreheads. The strategy has confusing results too because now libs I know are referring to Kamala Harris, with praise, as a socialist.
If that’s the case, what would be more important is advancing and focusing on class politics regardless of the terms involved. The subtext I get out of what she said is a “no, don’t worry. We’re not scary. I’m a good liberal.” It’s being backed into a corner. She could have easily said that what she regards as socialism is what promotes the interests of the working class above other concerns or what other countries are doing or have done.
libs I know are referring to Kamala Harris, with praise, as a socialist.
What fucking libs do you know?
The idea is that people will be more willing to seriously consider socialism if they don’t turn their brains off as soon as the word is mentioned.
She could have easily said that what she regards as socialism is what promotes the interests of the working class above other concerns or what other countries are doing or have done.
This would have been a good answer, too, but the answer she gave (1) responds to the part of the question about which countries she wants to emulate, and (2) is in a broader context of pointing to stuff like Britain’s NHS as a superior healthcare model.
Its true that it softens peoples opinion of the word Socialism, but it does so by changing its meaning.
So what does that leave us with? More people becoming open to learning about Marxism, or a surplus of liberals and social chauvinists calling themselves Socialists?
I don’t think it changes its meaning so much as it erases preconceived opposition rooted in decades of anticommunist propaganda. That makes it easier to educate people on what socialism actually is, because starting from a roughly blank slate is better than starting with dug-in opposition.
Say you want to convince Jimmy that basketball is fun and good. He knows nothing about basketball, but his entire life he’s been subjected to a media environment telling him basketball is dangerous, unfun, and no one gets laid if they play it. You try to talk to him about what basketball actually is, but his response is “nah, fuck basketball, I don’t even want to hear it.”
But a few years pass and the media environment changes to where people call damn near anything basketball. Jimmy, not actually knowing what basketball is, now hears about it all the time – often positively, if inaccurately – and his hardline opposition to even the concept of basketball changes to “hell, they’ll call anything basketball these days.” Now if you try to talk to him, you aren’t going to get that immediate, visceral opposition, and he might listen a bit if he likes you and thinks you might have some clarifying information.
