this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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Trumps support springs from the DNC. If they weren't so powerfully suppressing the left trump would never have gotten popular. He was originally an outsider to the left on mainstream politics on several issues and people responded positively enough to that to start the ball rolling. Trump is a symptom of a diseases the DNC prevents us from treating. They are the most proximate cause of all this.
Yeah this is exactly the perspective I’m against so I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. To argue that without the dnc the USA would somehow develop into some socialist utopia is a perspective completely at odds with the entirety of US and global history. Without the dnc the bourgeois class still exists and this is the fundamental roadblock to socialism. The Marxist contradiction is between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, not one liberal political party and another group which actually is mostly just another liberal political party and includes mostly liberals and much of the bourgeois class. I don’t argue with you on the basis that the dnc has nothing to answer for wrt the rise of trump, I argue with the idea that the dnc represents some sort of exceptional force in us politics that is uniquely responsible for the rise of trump and the maga movement. You’re doing great man theory just replacing the great man with the great party.
I also don’t know what you mean when you say trump was an outsider on the left since he was never on the left. He attacked Hillary from both her right and left, but he was never on the left.
The party system is a big part of the government. It's like a 5th estate. The DNC is the mechanism through which the owning classes opress the natural and strong revolutionary leftist tendencies among the US people. Without a controlled opposition the American people have a clear preference for socialist policy. Trump campaigned to the left of the DNC originally. He was also incoherrently rascist but so is the DNC so to most people that isn't a deal breaker.
“natural and strong revolutionary leftist tendencies among the US people” have you met the US people? Have you read about US history? You are doing exactly what I accused your perspective of doing in my original comment, casting white Americans as some sort of pure innocent group that has been deluded and tempted into evil by Hillary Clinton and the dnc. What is this clear preference for socialist policy? Californians rejecting an anti-slavery amendment? Floridians deciding not to expand abortion access? Voting in a guy twice explicitly campaigning on mass deportations of workers?
Trump never campaigned to the left of the dnc. Trump used some left wing talking points to seize upon most people’s dissatisfaction with neoliberalism, but being against neoliberalism isn’t by nature left wing. There have always been right wing critics of neoliberalism, and trump only ever espoused economic nationalism, America first policy and the continuation and growth of empire. His platform was for the members of the bourgeoisie hurt by neoliberalism and globalization, never for the working class.
Yes. The US people are strongly ideologically incoherent. We like policy's from the far left and far right We want to shoot guns at the government for being oppressive and to also opress people. When ever it is offered people respond hugely positively to socialist policy. It simply isn't offered enough for that preference to be meaningfully measured. Look at the 70s. Or the recent blm. Trump using some left wing talking points is infact campaigning to the left of the DNC. He didn't government that way but if you are a low engagement type of voter you can get that vibe. The DNC is far enough to the right that most fascist parties are too the left of them.
The recent conservative turn in this country is in many ways due to the reaction to blm. The entire history of the 70s is right wing reaction to civil rights and the great sixties social movements, and as the decade progresses the neoliberal consensus more and more takes shape until finally coming to ascendancy under Reagan who is given more of a popular mandate than trump has ever had. More than half the time the “oppression” we want to shoot the government for is “I’m being taxed as a small business owner” or “I the vaunted small business owner am being asked to comply with regulations put in place to benefit the working class.” Hardly a revolutionary outlook. For every great example of revolutionary politics in this country, you can find like 100x as many examples of Americans expressing the violent colonial settler ideology upon which the country was founded. I’m not arguing that Americans are irredeemable, but many of the popular movements in this country were in reality not as popular as we want to believe. There was always popular support for the opposition to these movements, and it’s that opposition from which trump emerges.
Trump threw out crumbs to the left in 2016, but he didn’t campaign as a left wing candidate. He also campaigned to the right of the dnc and his most vocal support always came from the far right. Lifting a couple Bernie sanders-esque talking points doesn’t make one a left wing candidate when you’re also making statements far to the right of any other candidate in the field. Why focus in on the couple vaguely left wing statements when you have more right wing talking points and your political platform is right-wing?