@sentientdessert Horseshoe red in tooth and claw.
@LiberalLibrarian I do not understand this statement.
@sentientdessert So. The Horseshoe Theory is that eventually the far right and far left meet together, like a horseshoe if you kept melding it into a circle.
@LiberalLibrarian Ah, I know of this concept, hadn't heard that term for it.
And yeah... I have seen that.
It's funny how the one thing that made me switch from right to left was... taking the advice of Glenn Beck and "[not taking] his word for it, look it up on your own."
I started looking things up and found that the majority of what he was saying was bullshit and conspiricy... If I ever meet the guy, I would tell him that, if only to make him question himself.
@sentientdessert I am against authoritarians of both right and left. Both offer simple answers to complex problems. Fascists and Communists can go fuck off.
@sentientdessert As we can see with the "Communist" Party of Russia, which is nothing but a docile opposition to Putin.
@LiberalLibrarian The forms of rule that call themselves communist are anything but. As in, they do not help the community. They exist only to pass the wealth from the common to the government, which... is not what that type of system is meant for.
I differentiate between actual communism and what exists in the world, because we've not had an actual communist society in the last 100 years. They've all been flavours of despotism or totalitarianism.
@LiberalLibrarian They just choose to go about it in different ways. But the end goal is to destroy things that the other has built.
People need to be helped, we're a social animal. Even the people who I don't like should still benefit from the progress we make. Even if they fight against it.
I actually like giving a shit about people, and that's what neither extreme seems to do.
@sentientdessert @LiberalLibrarian The majority of (non-tankie) anarchists (such as myself) are what I call "pragmatic" where they know that a truly free society can't exist in the confines of how society itself is built now to exist. Straight removal of any functioning structure of current society would create a vacuum with people not knowing how to fill it.
The anarchist purpose should then be educating, affecting, and convincing society as a whole to pursue a goal... (1/2)
@sentientdessert @LiberalLibrarian The goal being a society that is no longer built to need police, military, government (or as little as truly necessary, if any)... But as it sits, society it's structured specifically to make those things necessary. The biggest problem facing people of my belief is the broad acceptance that all those things being necessary are just "good enough" without any desire to build a better, truly free society. Complacent and comfortable in an abusive relationship.
@theunabeefer @sentientdessert
There is a wonderful book I have on my shelf which addresses this. W. Warren Wagar's "A Short History of the Future". It goes from hypercapitalist, to world socialist, to local anarchism. I highly recommend it.
@LiberalLibrarian @sentientdessert That sounds like my kind of book! I need to get that one, for sure!
@theunabeefer Make sureyou get the most recent edition. 1999. Sadly, Professor Wagar has gone over the Rainbow Bridge. @sentientdessert
@LiberalLibrarian For a moment I thought that was a euphamism for coming out of the closet and I was thinking "why should that matter?"
Then I remembered Asgard...
@sentientdessert @LiberalLibrarian The reason you don't hear much from the pragmatic anarchists (despite being the majority) outside of places like r/anarchism, is because we're not the ones being loud and demanding everything get burnt to the ground...
If you burn it to the ground, you have the risk of authoritarianism filling the power vacuum that you've just created. It's just not practical to be that extreme.
@theunabeefer Yes. This is like the German Communists not making common cause with the Socialists to stop Hitler because they thought he would be passing and then it would be their turn. @sentientdessert
@LiberalLibrarian @sentientdessert Someone in an anarchist email mailing list I was in (decades ago, when those were a thing) said something to the effect of "Sometimes, voting IS a form of antifascist action." and that was something that really opened my eyes in terms of reason and practicality in my beliefs.
And what that person said has never rung as true in my lifetime than it does lately.
The act of voting simply to keep fascism and fascists from power is antifascist action.
@theunabeefer It's happened around the world in many instances, the power vacuum is filled by someone that doesn't have the best interest of the people at heart. Someone who wants to be in the position. Even now, governments are being overthrown and people with authoritarian ideals are grabbing the reigns.
The thing is, there really should be no need for that kind of power...
@LiberalLibrarian
@theunabeefer @LiberalLibrarian I am refering specifically to tankie and fascist extremes in my references earlier.
@LiberalLibrarian It's funny. When I was on the right, I was an extremist in how I thought things should have been dealt with, when I shifted to the left, I was still holding a lot of that destructive mentaility with it. "This is how they want to do things, so we have to respond in kind" sort of thought process.
I'm still farther left than most, but not the anarcho/tankie mentality. I honestly think there's very little difference between the extreme right and left, they both want destruction