OBJECTION!

This thread has made me realize that while I was watching the hearings on it purely for comedy aspect, there were actually people out there being like, “Yeah that makes sense.”

Love it when the government takes away our stuff. Please, take away more of our stuff. Love me that security theater.

If you don’t like the app, just don’t use it. Nationalism is a hell of a drug.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with data security and everything to do with other social media companies lobbying to eliminate a competitor, using anti-China sentiment and fear-mongering as a justification. It’s all about the money.

This is such a condescending form of analysis that totally misses the mark. It’s basically just, “Trump was bad, but some people still like him. Why? Must be because they’re just too dumb to remember things.” There’s no actual evidence that people have forgotten any of the stuff they mention, it’s purely just that.

To attribute the issue to memory would imply that there was widespread agreement while he was in office that he was bad, which has faded over time. But Trump’s approval rating for most of his time in office hovered around 40%, similar to Biden’s. So what’s actually happening is not that people were on the same page about Trump being bad when the events of his presidency were fresh in their minds, but rather, that his supporters never agreed with/cared about the things the article is saying in the first place. Framing it around memory is nonsense.

The background for the KDP’s uprisings is WWI. The war was incredibly destructive and pointless for every country in Europe. Before the war, the Second International (of which the SDP was a founding member) put out a manifesto with unanimous support that said:

In case war should break out anyway it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.

However, once the war actually started, the SDP (along with many other social democratic parties in Europe) suddenly found all sorts of reasons to rally around the flag and support it unconditionally. The British socialists would point to problems in Germany under the Kaiser, the German socialists would point to problems with Russia under the Tsar, and each side would talk about how it’s not that they support the war, it’s just that they don’t want to lose. And so there was a failure across Europe (except in Russia, of course) to create domestic pressure to put an end to the war, and result was that it raged on until it had claimed 20 million lives.

It was only at the end of the war, when it was clear that Germany was going to lose regardless, that a revolution occurred, initially supported by both the SDP and the communists, which is what brought an end to the German Empire. During that uprising, the SDP and communists split over the direction of the country, and the SDP won and sent in the Freikorps to exterminate communist leadership. So when you talk about Thälmann trying to overthrow the government, I think it’s important to put that in the context that the government in question had come to power only 4 years prior by overthrowing the government - and that government would go on to last only 15 years in total before the Nazis were able to seize power through it. All of which is to say, it was a chaotic period, and there were reasons for the KDP to resent the SPD as well.

The tendency to force history into boxes defined by modern day politics loses a lot of that nuance. In contemporary American politics, there is no Second International. There is no Great War. There is no Sparticist Uprising. It’s bad enough when contemporary politics outside of the US are forced into the boxes defined by American politics, we don’t need to extend that throughout history.

Hitler didn’t win because he beat Hindenburg after Thälmann split the vote. He lost to Hindenburg, the center-right candidate endorsed by the social democrats, then won anyway because Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor.

The social democrats were the ones who refused to back Thälmann, the only anti-Hitler candidate in the race. And the same way that the communists called them “social fascists,” the social democrats used similar rhetoric, frequently saying that the communists were no different from the Nazis, that there was no difference between the far left and the far right.

But also, we don’t have to keep rehashing 100 year old grudges from another continent.

If he’s lost the Holden Bloodfeast demographic he’s finished.

I haven’t made any wild claims at all and the claims I have made I’ve backed up with scholarly works, but go off I guess.

So now we’ve veered into full-blown Malthusianism. You can’t treat human populations the way you treat animal populations. More humans means more people working and growing food, whereas animals simply graze or hunt on preexisting resources. Malthusian claims have been thoroughly debunked repeatedly throughout history, and have never been backed by any sort of evidence whatsoever.

Again, if you choose to reject history and evidence in favor of knee jerk defending colonialism and using long discredited theories, then I don’t really see what I can do here. You are simply wrong and in contradiction of scholarly work on the subject.

I really encourage you to look more into Amartya Sen’s work and his thesis that famines don’t just happen naturally and are virtually always traced back to political causes. Of course there are bad harvests and the like that can exacerbate a bad situation, but farmers are typically able to stockpile enough during good years to weather it. To say that 24 famines over the span of 50 years just happened naturally, at the exact same time that Indians were subject to exorbitantly high taxes and other horribly exploitative conditions, is a completely absurd and revisionist claim. It seems like you’re knee jerk defending Britain even when we’re discussing one of the darkest parts of its history. In addition to Sen’s work, you should also learn more about the conditions in India under colonialism, if you think the British deserve such extreme benefit of the doubt.

I don’t agree with their point comparing it to the Nazis, but I think this interpretation is being way too generous in reaction to that. Famines in India under British colonial rule were a frequent occurrence. Between 1850 and 1899, 15 million Indians died from no less than 24 major famines. The horrors inflicted through Britain’s nakedly colonial rule were not just innocent mistakes or the product of unexpected circumstances - this was simply the modus operendi of the empire. Frequent atrocities, oppression, and mass death were the status quo for much of the world’s population during this time period.

Obviously, the Nazis had no problem with any of that, they were only upset that they weren’t the ones getting to do it.

Pushing back against the idea that Churchill was worse than Hitler is good, but criticism of Churchill’s role in the famine outside of that comparison is perfectly valid and has academic support, for example, Amartya Sen’s work.

Do you have a source on Churchill’s death tool in comparison to Hitler’s?

Churchill was undeniably horrible and the naked colonialism of the British Empire had normalized atrocities occurring on a daily basis. But even so, I’m skeptical that his numbers would “put Hitler to shame,” considering the scale of the wars and genocide Hitler caused.

This article provides some quotes that certainly seem to indicate that malice played a role, or at best callous indifference.

You then put “little thing” in quotes. I’ve never once called genocide a little thing, ever. This is more dishonesty.

The comment you’re defending did. Calling it dishonesty is, ironically dishonesty.

That’s what I’m saying. Usually you lot wring your hands and say, “Oh, we really care so much about the genocide, it’s just Trump is so much worse, don’t you know.” But then you have comments like these that call genocide a “little thing,” and that it only docks a couple points off of how you’d rate a politician. So it reveals that all you posturing that you care is fake. You might prefer that it not happen, all else being equal, but it hardly matters to you at all.

A politician supporting genocide is like getting a different flavor of ice cream than what you wanted. This sort of honesty is rare, and it makes a much better starting point then the bullshit y’all are always pushing about how much you care. It’s a waste of time trying to argue against premises a person is merely pretending to hold.

Maybe you misinterpreted what I meant? I’m not asking for evidence that Trump isn’t pro-genocide, I’m asking for evidence of posts claiming that Trump isn’t pro-genocide.

What “context” am I missing here exactly, or what “conclusion” have I come to that I couldn’t have come to unless I was trying to start shit? Seems like my interpretation is extremely straightforward, the person claimed that there are posters saying that Trump isn’t pro-genocide, despite the conspicuous absence of any such comments in this thread, or linked to in their comment. So, they made it up, and are lying.

I love when liberals actually put things in these terms because it’s so much more honest than how they typically talk about it.

A candidate supporting genocide means they don’t, “give us every little fucking thing we want, and MORE.” A pro-genocide candidate is still a “7/10.” Good, yes, drop the pretense and tell the truth that you just don’t really give a shit how many foreigners get murdered, instead of trying to act like some bleeding heart. Exposing the contradictions like that is good.

and trump isn’t

[Citation Needed]

Pretty sure you’re a liar who just made that up. Prove me wrong.

Tulsi Gabbard isn’t anti-war. She explicitly called herself a hawk on the War on Terror. She’s a right-wing opportunist, and like other right wing opportunists (Tucker Carlson, for instance) she might occasionally have a broken clock moment where she criticizes a war, but it’s only because she wants to pivot to starting other wars elsewhere.

Tulsi is also a Zionist. She voted for a ban on BDS and called the protests antisemitic. In fact, she said that they were “puppets” of a “radical islamist organization” and, “I’m concerned about it because leaders in the West are not combating it. … Unfortunately, President Biden seems to be afraid to be called an Islamophobe.” This is similar to her criticisms of Obama for being insufficiently hawkish (in her view) on the War on Terror.

Don’t fall for right-wing grifters trying to take advantage of anti-war sentiment to push their agenda.

Did you want a list of dogshit that Trump has done?

No, I’m well aware of it.

It’s very funny to me that you’re defending Biden by talking about Trump when Biden isn’t even running anymore. There is no longer any “lesser evil” argument for you to hide behind. Trump is completely irrelevant to Biden’s record and I won’t acknowledge a word about that in that context.

Before Biden became the Democratic nominee in 2020, it was perfectly acceptable to criticize him and call a spade a spade. He’s one of the architects of mass incarceration, and of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he’s an irredeemable monster with the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent people on his hands. But once he was up against Trump, all you people choose to willfully deceive yourselves into this fantasy that he’s some kind of progressive figure. And now, the reason for that self-deception is gone, but you’re still deluding yourself and licking his boots. It’s pathetic.

I’m not willing to lie to myself or anyone else for the sake of helping some war criminal win an election that I don’t even have a voice in, seeing as I don’t live in a swing state. But it’s even worse for you to do it not even having a vote here at all. You’re lieing to yourself for the sake of these horrible people when it doesn’t even help them in any way.

oh, but for some reason it’s “reasonable speculation” when it’s YOUR opinion

Yes, because my speculation comes from facts and evidence, not wishful thinking. As I said though, no speculation is actually necessary.

They do that to dem voters only though suspiciously

Are there any Republicans on Lemmy that you’d like us to address? Where?

which Biden is likely trying to get a ceasefire in the background

This is completely baseless speculation at best, and essentially a conspiracy theory at worst. Biden has given consistent, unconditional support to Israel throughout the current genocide and through his entire decades long career.

Reasonable speculation, based on recent and past behavior, would suggest that what’s actually happening in the background is that Biden and Netanyahu are operating in lockstep, and any contrary statements they make are keyfabe, with private assurances that there will be no disruption of material aid. On the other hand, we could not rely on speculation at all and just look at the facts, that Biden has been completely behind Netanyahu on anything that actually matters, materially.

BlueAnon conspiracy theory.