I’ve been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to “voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism” and “the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic” and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.
More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they’re replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.
It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling – in retrospect I’m pretty sure I could’ve built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that’s what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) – and the only reason I’m not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.
I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?
This has got to be a troll, right? A liberal democracy is by definition not authoritarian, what do you even think it means?
Nah, I agree with the original point. Liberal Democracy is only one form of Democracy, and is particularly good at resisting popular change and supporting whoever has the money to lobby. You can see in the US, for example, even presidents who win the popular vote, lose!
More direct democratic forms, whether that be direct democracy, participatory economics, parlimentary democracy, industrial democracy, and so forth are all more accountable to the people and capable of positive change that the public desires.
Despite being overwhelmingly popular, the US does not have: Legalized Marijuana, Medicare for All, Student Loan Forgiveness (outside loophole forgiveness), Enshrined Abortion Protection, and more.
Read up on the types of democracy here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_democracy
From your link, sounds like the exact opposite of authoritarian to me. Just because authoritarian “neo-liberal” places like the USA choose to call themselves liberal democracies doesn’t make them correct.
What is “authoritarian” if not a method to suppress popular opinion and exert the will of the minority? Those are the stated goals of liberal democracy, but not the function.
Where are you getting these “stated goals”? Who is the minority, elected officials? What am I missing here?
The stated goal of liberal democracy is to “enshrine personal liberties, the rule of law, Private Property, and political freedom” via a representative government in a Capitalist state. In another phrase, it is a Capitalist state with representatives.
In practice, the purpose of a representative, rather than more direct forms of democracy, is to provide the wider public with a set of predetermined choices, not to represent the views of the public. This results in political parties that are good at fundraising being the only viable parties.
Furthering this logical chain, those who appeal to those with the most ability and interest in shaping the state will be the representatives the public can vote on. Ie, those who can convince large corporations and the ultra-wealthy to make significant donations, are the ones who retain power.
The reality is that in Capitalism, a minority controls the majority of the wealth, and this minority is the Capitalist, owner class. Capitalists lobby and advertise for candidates that do not fundamentally challenge their profits or positions, which leads us to presidential elections that appear to be a constant “lesser evil” voting process. The evil is the point! We just choose which flavor is easier to suck down, which is normally the side willing to make more concessions.
More direct forms of democracy remove this barrier.
I think I get your point, but it seems to ignore that plenty of places have successful labour parties that have the backing of unions rather than wealthy capitalists.
Sounds like you’re basing all your arguments on one particular county!
The labor parties usually cannot perform radical change, even if they wanted to. If a majority Socialist party took control of a country and tried to implement radical change, you’d have to also make sure other instruments of Capital like the Army and Police, who usually are led by people who are well-connected with Capitalists and thus are likely to resist radical change.
This has happened in England, Chile, and other countries. That’s why the state cannot merely be siezed electoraly, but need be siezed entirely and replaced.
This guy read reform or revolution
They have a point for the USAs flavor of democracy specifically. I don’t have a choice on the ballot to vote for a working class person who shares my struggles. My options are those who came from very wealthy families and have tremendous influence.
You need a lot of money and power to get on ballots and to actually win anything. So yeah we have a democracy, but we only get to vote for the wealthy who are largely influenced (or bought and paid for entirely) by corporations and other ultra-wealthy people who want policy written for themselves.
Yeah, but I wouldn’t call the USA a very liberal place at all
You know, that’s fair too. We are pretty right-wing compared to most of Europe.
ask informed middle easterners or south americans if they think you aint authoritarian.
or the informed people in your own homeless camps. or your own black and queer people. or your own immigrants. or maybe Assange, Snowden and many others.
What do you mean “you”? Do you think I’m an American? And do you think that I think the USA isn’t authoritarian?
I explain my comment to ilovethebomb
That comment has nothing to do with my actual question, you can’t just vaguely gesture to some graphs
The graphs and studies and comment elaborate on why liberal democracy is authoritarian.
Specifically the point I was making was that liberal democracy under capitalism is only democratic for the ruling class. It is an authoritarian dictatorship because it gives one class full authority to dictate the actions of another.
I understand how this can be difficult to grasp immediately if you don’t have an understanding of class dynamics and the history of labor. I don’t expect you to get it because of some comment on lemmy but do think about who really has power in capitalist neoliberal society.
This video is a decent entry point to my line of thinking here
I think this is the problem, you’re using “liberal” and “neoliberal” pretty interchangeably, right? Most people do not think ‘protect the rights of individuals and don’t tell them what to do’ and ‘let business and the ultra-rich do whatever they want’ are the same philosophy!
The purpose of a system is what it does
They work out to be pretty similar in practice, though. Like, you can see how private property (not personal property important distinction) as a right encourages the buying up and scalping of pretty much anything that can be qualified as private property by, basically, random chance as according to the free market, right? So, the first one creates the second one. I.E. 9 times outta 10 they boil down to effectively being the same philosophy in practice.