bearboiblake

Absolutely we need to build resistance communities beyond electoral politics. This involves building solidarity across the working class. That includes people who have voted republican. They are not your true enemies. Your true enemies are the ruling class, i.e. billionaires and corporations.

Most republican voters are not die-hard nazis, many of them are mislead, manipulated and gaslighted their entire lives, including by their parents. You could have been one too, but by the coincidence of your birth.

I'm not saying people should go out of their way to offer sympathy and compassion, I'm just saying that kicking someone while they're down achieves nothing at all. That's their kind of tactics - bullying, harassment, etc.

By the way, you might want to remove the casual homophobia from your vocabulary, that's also pretty counterproductive towards building solidarity.

Again, people aren't going to magically reach that point. "Oh, I lost everything, despite following all of my values. I guess this must be the consequences of my values being wrong" is not a thing that happens in real life. It takes someone to be sympathetic and compassionate, so they feel safe to be vulnerable, so they can unlearn their negative world view.

People don't change all at once, generally. You don't go from supporting trump to disavowing imperialism over night. It's a slow, invisible process, and it can be stopped entirely or disrupted by entering a scenario where the individual feels threatened or isolated.

I am not saying we all just need to link hands and sing kum ba ya. All I'm saying is have some compassion for people who are, most likely, poorer, less well educated and got manipulated, brainwashed, and gaslighted their entire lives into supporting fascism, especially when those people are obviously suffering.

Most republican voters just vote for who their parents voted for. Yes, there are some who are extremely radical and who will probably never abandon their ideology, but most of them do not fit that description.

It benefits the ruling class to divide the working class. That's why Hillary wants you to believe they are a "basket of deplorables". But the truth is they are just people, like us. If you were born in the same place and lived the same life as these people, most likely you would have voted Trump too.

Saying that they are incapable of realizing the error of their ways is essentially dehumanizing them, and that is what fascists do to their enemies.

People take considerable time and effort to come to the conclusion that their entire world view was wrong. A lot of them get their need for community met by the right wing. If we on the left just ridicule and act aggressively towards people demonstrating any amount of second thoughts or doubt in their worldview, choosing to humiliate them rather than using it as an opportunity to broaden their doubts and set them on a bath to deradicalization, we are failing in our role. We are telling them to stay in their lane, because they will find no community, sympathy or compassion outside of their hateful spaces.

Firstly, what do you mean by claiming to be a black panther?

Secondly, I'm sorry, but what you've written is just not true. You can only learn compassion through example.

Do you think someone who has known only humiliation and punishment is going to spontaneously develop compassion?

Honestly though, I admit I didn't realize he was just asking for money, rather than just looking for sympathy.

There's every chance you're completely right and that he would never abandon fascism. But everything we know about deprogramming nazis shows that it takes compassion. Yelling at them feels good for us and maybe it galvanizes anti-fascist sentiment, but the far better way to do that is to speak out with one voice: "Yeah, it sucks what you're going through, I have sympathy for your situation, but the people you blame are not responsible for it, it's the rich, wealthy, powerful, imperialist ruling class."

The right wing are brainwashed into thinking a fascist violent crackdown will improve their day-to-day living conditions. We know that it won't. So when people realize "hey I'm a fascist, how come my conditions are so shit?" do you really think "LMAO GET FUCKED NAZI U DESERVE THIS LEOPARD EATING UR FACE" helps more than "you're right, you have been tricked and manipulated to believe in something contrary to your actual values"?

It's not about turning the other cheek out of some high-minded idea of righteousness, this is about actually beating them.

We need to let MAGA-lite escape MAGA with some saved face if we want to defeat MAGA.

They are all of them deceived by the true enemy, the ruling class.

I share your anger but we need to realize that party politics is designed to divide the working class against itself. We need to stop doing their work for them.

If you want to defeat fascism we need solidarity across the working class.

Bullying right wingers who are suffering flies in the face of that. It only sows further division.

Yes, they were wrong, they voted for fascisn, I get the hate, but we need to find compassion for these people to get them back onboard.

Bullying them just causes them to lash out, get more entrenched, and discourage people from admitting they've been duped.

If you really so desperately need to feel superior to them that you can't hold back your righteous anger to actually make the world a better place, you're a part of the problem too.

how many times do we have to say it

the law is optional for corporations and the rich

the law is for oppressing the poor and justifying it

I'm sorry, but I've had to close your comment because it was too speculative.

what if they didn't want to buy the licenses? what if they just wanted to take everything?

what if the US is the new nazi germany and just needs lebensraum for a post-climate change world?

so many questions, who can say

And how do you achieve that in a flat structure?

Through a social revolution. I do not believe that a flat structure can ever be built by a hierarchical structure, because those in power will always cling on to their power. Power corrupts. Anarchism recognizes and takes this fact into account in how we achieve our aims, rather than denying the realities of human nature.

He’s generating profit, that’s all that matters to the shareholders.

Is he?

Have a look at the MSFT share price

My only point is that share price and profit are not necessarily correlated, people mix them up all the time, so I try to correct that when I see it. I'm not disagreeing with your overall point - I would agree that most investors only care about the share price.