I think I agree with that. Although it’s not so much that I think he’s not well read. He’ll quote Marx and Lenin from memory. He just has no experience putting any of what he’s learned into practice which is a necessary part of educating oneself. I think it leaves his audience pretty unprepared for the shit show they’ll encounter if they join any of the orgs he promotes.
He is a DSA shill but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The org generally doesn’t try to herd members back into the Democratic Party. It even has an ML cochair and ML and Maoist caucus. The problem is they don’t have any way to discipline their members who run for elected office. That’s how you get opportunists like AOC and Mamdani joining just to try and siphon off some free volunteer labor for their campaigns. Hasan only superficially engages with DSA which is why he trusts these candidates but then gets surprised when they act like democrats.
I share criticism of Hasan, but a lot of what you’re saying is not really true. He’s definitely not a shill for the Democratic Party despite being friendly to DSA candidates. He even openly criticizes them whenever they lend support to the Democratic Party rather than focus on building independent socialist organizations. He also constantly accused Kamala and other democrats of supporting genocide and never told anyone to vote for her. He even has good things to say about orgs like PSL and supports China as a socialist project. Of course, I agree that he doesn’t see any revolutionary potential in the US in the near term. However, that’s an accurate analysis of the conditions in the US. It also doesn’t preclude any sort of long term revolutionary horizon nor does it imply that he’s a reformist.
His main problem is that he is a media figure covering American politics. Being in media tends to make people idealists and Hasan isn’t an exception. American political coverage also tends to focus on topics that liberals care about. Since he primarily reactions to liberal media all day, his coverage is geared towards liberals. He also isn’t really involved in organizing in any way himself. That makes him less effective as a propagandist that should be steering people towards socialist orgs.
Unfortunately they had to endure years of bombing and famine to get to that point.
It’s more that Americans were spared the worst of the effects of imperialism exploitation because imperialism needs a stable base of operations. If conditions were as bad in the US as they are in other parts of the world there would be revolts and the whole system would collapse.
Luckily we don’t need any sci-fi tech to solve this problem. A French invention that’s already two centuries old at this point will do just fine.
I don’t really disagree. My point is more that if Biden or his AG had actually pursued this with the degree of seriousness it deserves, Trump would likely not be president. People need better options than to vote for a pedophile rapist or someone who let pedophile rapists go free.
What are you talking about? Presidents have directed the DOJ to look into specific crimes and even have created special investigatory tasks forces all the time. Obama did exactly that after 2008 in order to investigate financial fraud. Don’t you think that a child sex trafficking ring involving some of the US’s most rich and powerful people, including former presidents, deserves to be prioritized in the same way?
At the very least Biden is responsible for appointing Merrick Garland of all people. Remember this was after Epstein’s apparent “suicide”.
Are we just going to ignore that the DOJ had all of these documents while Biden was president and just twiddled their thumbs apparently?
Even if he’s being disingenuous or ignorant when self identifying as a socialist, I don’t really care. What matters is that his actions do not align with any realistic path towards socialism.
This is what happens when you commit to reforming an irreformable system. For Mamdani not to be thrown out of office he has to play ball and do shit like this. That puts him in the awkward spot of defending things he actively campaigned against. This kind of hypocrisy will leave his base of support feeling jaded and demoralized which in turn leaves him without the political leverage he needs to enact progressive policy. All that will be left for him to do is more compromise.
That’s why I think any self described socialist running for office in the US has to be ready to play the role of an intransigent advocate for the disaffected. They have to be that stick in the mud that will not give in even if it means the powers that be try to destroy them. That’s doesn’t mean they have to neglect all the duties of the office or even be much of a firebrand. However, it’s the only way I think you can maintain the trust and enthusiasm of the working class people from whom you derive your power.
Too often I see self described socialists making the mistake of thinking that’s it’s the political office they hold which gives them power. In a political system designed for capitalism the tools at their disposal will almost never suit their purposes as a socialists.
So instead of using sweeps to keep the business class happy and at bay, Mamdani should be at the doorstep of every single real estate investment firm in the city making it readily apparent whose at fault for this humanitarian crisis. He should be highlighting the need for tenants unions, ending sweeps, supporting rent strikes, and ordering moratoriums on evictions until the city or state actually do something to end homelessness. He must be willing to make enemies of the wealthy business elite, the people who are the natural enemies of the working class.
If he can’t do that then it doesn’t matter how sincere he is about being a socialist. He’ll be nothing more than a bump in the road for a system that intends to consume us all.
They refuse to campaign on popular policies even when it increases their chances of losing because it doing otherwise would anger their donors. They know it might cause them to lose. It’s purposeful. What else do you call that?
Oh come on. There are countless options you’re just ignoring between sitting through a city council meeting and a protracted people’s war. I even gave you examples of how progressive politics was advanced in the past. If you don’t want to learn the lessons of history then why should anyone listen to do? Are you actually that allergic to any sort of politics that inspires and mobilizes people? You can call anyone who wants to do more than sit in a city budget meeting a “tankie” and then pat yourself on the back all day, it won’t make your argument any less wrong. I mean seriously, the last meaningfully economic progressive policy was the creation of Medicare and Medicaid which happened in the 60’s and yet you’re acting like the decline started in the 2010s. But yeah sure, progressivism was doing so well during the Reagan and Bush eras. Lol
We cannot push this all at once, all we can do is nudge the needle back towards progressivism until it starts to choke capital.
That won’t work. When has it ever worked? Labor right were won through violent strikes often times involving shootouts with the police. Civil rights were won with mass public disobedience alongside the looming threat of violent confrontation. Dr. King derided the same comfortable liberals you seem to want to appeal to. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect incremental progress through compromise and insider politics when that’s never been an effective strategy.
Of course I don’t discount the reality that we are not in place where enough people are ready and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to put capital on the defense. That said, inequality is rising, living conditions are degrading, and the US government is becoming increasingly brazen about the ways in which it intends to sell out its own citizens to the highest bidder. The path of decline that we are on will create a mass of people with not much left to lose. That’s when there is real opportunity to organize people into something capable of turning the tide.
Basically we can prepare for that eventuality or we can have a blind faith in a handful of well intentioned yet painfully impotent elected officials. That’s not to say we should sit out elections but rather said elections need to be a tool for organizing disaffected people rather than a promise to change the system from the inside.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and oh look it replies like a duck too, forgive me for thinking it’s a duck. Maybe take your own advice and engage with my points instead of getting so needlessly defensive.
You’re arguing against a caricature of the left wing critiques levied at politicians like AOC or Mamdani. You’re ignoring how those actions, which are frankly not isolated, are indicative of a very different perspective and theory of change than many on the left have. Pretending that any other theory of change is actually just black and white moralism is an incredibly bad faith way to argue. Honestly, it’s just a ridiculous perspective to have when you would be hard pressed to find similar critiques levied at electeds like say Rashida Talib.
Well your argument sounds like ones I’ve heard 1000x over defending elected officials like AOC whenever they do something like vote to fund Israel’s iron dome or forcibly stop a railway strike. The problem is, trading favors and votes is the kind of game that only works when you have a network of wealthy benefactors. If you think that these types of compromises are necessary, it likely means that you have some degree of blind faith in the American political system.
This just reads like a bad faith interpretation of anyone on the left who might have ideological differences between themselves and Mamdani. That doesn’t mean they aren’t pragmatic. For example, if you believe that our current government cannot be reformed then compromise with the right wing is often the least pragmatic way to bring about change. Pretending that this means you’re making perfect the enemy of the good either means you’re being disingenuous or you just don’t understand the perspective you’re critiquing.
Maybe if the US hadn’t tried to invade Cuba the year before they wouldn’t have requested Soviet assistance. Also maybe the US shouldn’t have placed nukes in Turkey if it didn’t want the soviets to do something similar.
The person you’re replying to is equivocating between the violence of slavery and the violence of a slave revolt, ie the Haitian revolution.
Dessalines was a former slave who became a leader of the revolution. He order the massacres of French colonists out of fear that they, with support from the French government, would overturn the revolution and reimpose slavery. His brutality was a reflection of the incomparably hellish conditions and violence that Haitian slaves endured.
That said, the questionable morality or necessity of his actions are not the reasons why he’s held up today. People don’t see him up as a figure to emulate. Instead, he’s a symbol and reminder to the perpetrators of imperial violence of the consequences that they will inevitably face.