Mr Fish

can you not have auth left and lib left viewpoints?

Yes, but actually no. The distinction is fundamentally unstable. If the left is constantly questioning power structures, it will inevitably turn to whatever structure the auth left comes up with.

what’s wrong with the definition of left and right on the political compass?

It’s specially economic left/right, which is almost always defined by taxation, government spending, and social welfare. While leftists usually say social welfare is a good thing, it’s not changing the fundamentals of how capitalism works, which is the current dominant power structure that leftists are against.

do auth left not also take issue with the power capitalist businesses have?

Yes, but they usually put something just as bad in its place. You might have heard people saying that the USSR was “state capitalist rather than communist”. This means that the workers and customers had just as little say in how things are run than they would under capitalists, only is was directly with the state rather than individual business owners.

Contestant: "can you use it in a sentence?" Judge: *aussie accent intensifies*

It comes from the French revolution, when the people who wanted a better king sat on the right side of the debate room, and people who wanted to get rid of the king sat on the left. From my understanding, right wing is about incremental improvement on what currently exists (optimistically, current right wing isn't even about this), while left wing is about questioning what exists and redesigning it from the ground up.

Only on the political compass, which uses a definition of left vs right that a lot of leftists disagree with. Really, the entire history of "left wing" politics has been about questioning and dismantling authority. The terms "left wing" and "right wing" come from the French revolution, when the people in favour of simply reforming the monarchy sat on the right side of the room, while the people who wanted to fully dismantling the monarchy sat on the left. A lot of more modern leftist thought is about questioning the power that capitalist businesses have.

You cannot imagine my relief at seeing this

Am I high or am I seeing that jar saying “nutolla”?

My parents have a shed with all the shit that they have amassed over the years. Somehow my moonboot from 2016-17 ended up there, and I think it’s still there to this day. Along with other random things like a slide projector.

The enshitification of search engines also doesn’t help with finding answers directly.

Not getting blastoise out for that job?

Can you tell me precisely what Ukraine did to provoke Russia into invading, other than just historically being part of the Russian empire?

And snakes

nazi invasion in 1941 Not commenting on '39-40? everyone wanted them to collapse This changes what exactly? Even if everyone wanted it to collapse for purely imperialistic reasons, that doesn’t actually say anything about the government being good or bad.

Don’t expect funny from jankforlife. The best you can get is “America bad therefore soviets good”

Fritz Haber has entered the chat

advocating for voting in genocidal right wingers I am advocating for using your vote to reduce human cost as much as possible. What that means depends on the context. If you’re in America, the decision right now is between one genocide, two genocides, or refusing to have an impact on that decision with how impossible the system is for third parties. One less genocide is the least bad option, unless you have a better one. If you’re in New Zealand (where I live, so I’m more familiar with the politics here than anywhere else), there are multiple options because of MMP voting. That means I won’t be advocating for voting in genocidal right wingers. citation needed Labour coalitions have historically been the governments that have had the best impact on workers rights. At least far more than national coalitions. Also, don’t think I’m saying you should vote for labour next year. Labour is shit, vote for someone better

And here is an even more cursed version

“Very cheap” in terms of time, effort, money, and opportunity cost for each individual involved

OK maybe I read that wrong. The way I interpreted it, I read “electoralism” as using voting as a primary tool. Using that definition, I agree with that paragraph. Voting alone is nowhere near enough to produce real change. But if the definition of “electoralism” is using voting in addition to direct action, I don’t think that paragraph gives much reasoning behind itself. It’s a good statement, but it needs more backing it up

Mate, I read the whole thing. The only claim I saw as to why voting is counter productive is that “voting convinces people that they’ve done all they need to” idea, which I think is flawed. All the other arguments are talking about voting having low impact and it can’t fundamentally change things. Please, if there is another part that I missed, tell me what it is, whether that’s something backing up the complacency claim or another claim entirely. I’d love to be proven wrong here.

Nowhere in that does it really explain why voting is counter productive. Voting is a tool, and a very cheap one. It only costs at most an hour once every 3 years and requiring knowledge of current events and politics, which is stuff you will know about anyway if you’re involved in any kind of direct action. The only potential argument there is the psychological one, where people are lead to think voting is enough to do their part, but I don’t think that’s a strong enough argument to pass up choosing your opposition. As shit as Labour is, National and Act are worse, and by any logic other than accellerationism (which is a terrible idea of you care about the human cost), Labour will make fighting capitalism that little bit easier. I understand not running for office. That article gives good reasons that actually joining politics is a wasted effort. It takes a lot of time and money, and almost always ends up making people slide towards the “reasonable politician”, not the radical that they promised to be.

Solution: more blankets. Where I grew up we had regular frosts all through winter, but I never really went with anything more than 18. 2-3 blankets and a thick duvet does a lot for keeping you warm.