You may have noticed a distinct lack of return2ozma. This is due to their admitting, in a public comment, that their engagement here is in bad faith:
I’m sure there will be questions, let me see if I can address the most obvious ones:
- Can I still post negative stuff about Biden?
Absolutely! We have zero interest in running an echo chamber. However, if ALL you’re posting is negative, you may want to re-think your priorities. You get out of the world what you put into it and all that.
- Why now?
Presumption of innocence. It may be my own fault, but I do try to think the best of people, and even though they were posting negative articles, they weren’t necessarily WRONG. Biden’s poll numbers, particularly in minority demographics ARE in the shitter. They are starting to get better, but he still has a hell of a hill to climb.
- Why a 30 day temp ban and not a permanent ban?
The articles return2ozma shared weren’t bad, faked, or from some wing-nut bias site like “beforeitsnews.com”, they were legitimate articles from established and respected news agencies, pointing out the valid problems Biden faces.
The problem was ONLY posting the negatives, over and over and then openly admitting that dishonest enagement is their purpose.
Had they all been bullshit articles? It would not have taken anywhere near this much time to lay the ban and it would have been permanent.
30 days seems enough time for them to re-think their strategery and come back to engage honestly.
So, I still don’t think that what I am saying is what you think I am saying.
I wasn’t saying that those three bullet points were the things that would indicate a shill user. The only reason I brought them up was to speak to you directly about how I saw your user – they were all things that applied to you, as I saw it, in some way. But like I say, I don’t really try to get involved in saying “I think this particular user is fake” unless it’s pretty egregious. Just expressing leftist agitation isn’t it. Like I was recommending slrpnk to somebody recently, sort of like yeah they hate voting sometimes, IDK, but whatever, they are good people.
One of a much smaller set of behaviors that’ll imply to me that someone is fake is a glaring incongruity – like beliefs or ways of speaking that very rarely go together. A good example is ozma talking about CNN as a trusted liberal news, sort of “our news” since all of us are leftists together… presumably if you are this far-left lemmy.ml person, you will see how ridiculous that is. Does it mean on its own he’s a shill? Not completely, no. But it’s super weird. That kind of thing is why I am suspicious of him, somewhat less suspicious of you even though you post stuff that to me seems wildly counterproductive to leftist progress in this country, and not at all suspicious of slrpnk. Does that way of looking at it make sense?
So your intent in posting memes against voting for Biden is to spur the reader to get involved in leftist action? What would they start doing, to improve the state of the country? I’m not trying to be dickish by asking that, I’m genuinely asking.
Yeah, 100%. This is one of the key reasons why I don’t like the shills. The country needs a whole lot of help definitely including replacing the Democrats with something substantially better, and by distorting the whole conversation away from “how do we make some progress” and towards “is it a good idea or not to let Trump get elected and start imprisoning anyone to the left of Mitch McConnell and shooting anyone who tries to hold a protest”, it’s eliminating a lot of the potential for forward progress that something like Lemmy could otherwise provide.
I’m sorry that I seem to keep misunderstanding. I still think encouraging that speculation at all is problematic but I won’t push the issue more, I think i’ve made my opinion clear.
I realize that this would appear to be counterproductive to a less black-pilled progressive, but I simply do not believe even democrats have any intent to address crucial issues in a way that challenges or threatens the overall capital and imperial structure on which the US has been built (this encompasses my critique of incrementalism, because incrementalist proposals always fall short of challenging those ingrained macro structures i believe are fundamental to truly addressing our active crises). I suspect our support of Israel is one of those issues, I also think climate change and campaign finance and election reform are as well (I already know you disagree with me about incremental climate change progress under Biden, we don’t need to get into it here). And I believe without a hint of doubt that none of them will ever be addressed without anything less than even the mildest of discomfort among comfortable liberal democrats.
To drive progress we must sow discontent against the status quo, that much has always been clear.
I just don’t think any of these things are happening. I think you’re mounting this grand challenge against an enemy that 99% doesn’t exist on Lemmy, and the people who actually are reading your messages are in a very different place than you’re describing here. When they say “yes Gaza sucks please can we get a better president in the future but in the meantime also Trump is 10 times worse for Gaza among many other things so let’s not elect him, also let’s go to the Palestine protest this Saturday” and you scream in their face “GENOCIDE JOE, GENOCIDE JOE, DON’T TRY TO SILENCE MY DISSENT” you’re producing no benefit for leftism in this country.
If you wanted to go the DNC and start yelling at them about support for Israel and tepid marijuana reform, then sure. That sounds fine to me, that would sound productive (because I think there you would encounter some discouragement of any “dissent” like anti Israel sentiment).
Do you think that the Communists in 1932 who were fighting the SPD, instead of Hitler, accomplished progress by sowing discontent against the status quo? Certainly that’s what they were doing, just my assessment of their success level is pretty limited, since they almost all were killed.
Lmao, I mean… Disagree? Look, it’s right here even
Fuckin… Look man, if you don’t see a problem in just that first sentence I don’t think you’re trying.
I think we’ve run this line of argumentation through, we’ve circled back to some of the stuff we started with and frankly your effort here is clearly declining. As fun as this was I really don’t feel like pulling references from earlier in the conversation. And holy hell, we’ve had this argument before, don’t you remember?
I’m sorry lol, I’m just not interested in having this conversation again. You’ll say ‘the SPD split the vote because they were too stubborn to join the KPD’ and then i’ll say ‘sure but the SPD was reacting to the same conditions that cultivated the NSDAP in the first place’ and then you’ll say 'i agree but stopping the nazis was more important ’ and then i’ll say ‘but they didn’t stop them, they let them in, and also even if they had if they didn’t address the conditions that lead to the NSDAP then they wouldn’t ever really stop them so the KPD should have joined the SPD’ and then you’ll say ‘yea I agree with that but they had the majority so they didn’t’ and i’ll say ‘and they didn’t stop the nazis, I thought we were trying to learn from this example not rationalize what ended up happening’
LMAO though at you claiming i’m being overdramatic and then immediately turn around and compare my light agitation to helping the nazis rise to power. Holy shit did that conversation devolve quickly.
So to deal with the four bullet points one by one in more detail:
I get what you’re saying in breaking down that paragraph of mine, and I can respond to what you’re saying about it if you want me to, but I feel like I need to point out that in my eyes not a single one of those bullet points is in it, or anywhere near it.
You said earlier “Most people who share my perspective have long since stopped trying to argue anything in good faith at all with centrists.” I’m gonna be honest, I have reached that same point with a lot of the lemmy.ml hivemind, and this is why. You are wildly mischaracterizing what I actually think, to the point where you’re saying things I strongly disagree with (e.g. voting is the only thing that matters, any dissent against Biden is forbidden) and then attributing them to me.
The conversation I would like to have with you is, we need better outcomes than Biden, how do we get there. It is frustrating and pointless to have to over and over again have that much more productive conversation be recast as, I am supporting Biden no matter what and squashing any dissent against him and actively hostile to anything better than him, and then for me to have to try to explain that that’s not accurate and be lectured about the contents of my own mind and my own opinions, and have an extended debate about it where I’m apparently not allowed to the be the authority on what I think and what my opinions are.
Surely that makes sense? Or no?
Look, I’ve written and shelved a few responses to this already, but I wasn’t being coy when I said I think we’ve run this conversation bare. I’m having a hard time contending with what seems like willful rejection of my critique of your framing - which is fine, it’s your political world-view and I can’t possibly expect to change it in a day. It just seems there’s an insurmountable disagreement that we can’t get past, and the longer we talk the more exaggerated we’re getting about the other’s perspective and we’re not getting any closer to an understanding than we already have.
Here’s a problematic exchange:
Me:
You:
The misconnect:
“I never suggested that voting was the only thing that mattered”. I know, that’s why I said “I don’t mean anyone has actually said this”. My point is that all political activity within this frame of view is interpreted through that electoral lense, and I’m pointing to that framing as not just problematic but the actual target of pretty much all effective agitation. That the spectrum of political action must fit through this narrow opening of election day is necessarily a rejection of the use of dissent outside of it. Your objection to and suspicion of bad-actors is a reflection of this, too: even honest critique from reputable sources is suspect of over-the-line provocation simply because the intent may be to distort public opinion away from voting for Biden in november, even if the substance of that provocation is acknowleged as fair. It is that idea that is the subject of my critique, but instead of addressing that problem you fall back to shit like this:
You say you can’t see how this statement revolves/hinges around electoral essentialism, but I don’t think that’s true. I think (notice that I am stating an opinion and not a statement of fact) you do see it, but you believe it is the essential predicate to all agitative action that follows, which is a fair feeling (as i’ve acknowledged). Having acknowleged that perspective, I’m offering a challenge to that framing: that electoralist lenses collapse political negotiation into a partisan binary (you are either working for this electoral outcome or that one), and it functionally rejects activity that falls on the wrong side (e.g. critiquing Biden is fine (good even), so long as the intent is still to help him defeat trump, or at least that the intent is not to hurt his chances).
I have repeatedly stated my opinion that effective protest is only that which implicitly threatens that electoral coalition. It seeks to sow discontent with the policies on-offer to put pressure on representation, and it isn’t just yelling at the representative, it is an act of cleaving some portion of that base off so that the candidate must choose between their own goal of winning or relenting on the position being protested for.
Protest is necessarily hostile toward the electoral political calculations, and by gatekeeping valid protest to activity that fits within that frame neuters its ability to push for change. Fostering tension is the goal. It seeks to be present in every political discussion about that candidate, lingering as an ominous and threatening presence that makes not just that candidate squirm and feel unwelcome, but all of the moderates who work to support them, too.
No, I fucking haven’t. I am not attributing words as coming straight from your mouth, I am presenting you with what I think your underlying assumptions are. You have not literally said “voting is the only thing that matters, any dissent against Biden is forbidden”. What you have done is rhetorically narrow the acceptable forms of dissent to that which fits into this electoral binary. Your method of identifying ‘bad-faith’ argumentation revolves around how or if that dissent is intended to effect electoral outcomes. I have become a broken record, repeating the same words endlessly:
effective protest seeks to disrupt status quo coalitions, effective protest seeks to disrupt status quo coalitions, effective protest seeks to disrupt status quo coalitions
I’ve said this repeatedly, but sure, I will say it again. Political agitation involves being a relentless-fucking prick. It means dominating every political conversation with the shit you want changed, raise the issue until it cannot be ignored, and absolutely do not allow it to be dismissed as irrelevant noise or covert opposition. It involves being so relentless that their only reprieve is to forcibly remove you from the space you are occupying. That is what I am doing and what I think you should be doing too, and this is why MLK castigated white liberals as the single greatest hurtle toward black liberation. Their obstruction is defined by that line they simply will not cross, and it is the goal of agitation to drag those people up to the line and push their complacent asses over it.
When you say things like ‘why are you bothering people here with this, we agree with you’… Emphatically, no you fucking don’t.
I’m going to be blunt. I was registered as third party (green party or libertarian) for many years of my life, I’ve done various activism things in and out of electoral politics. You are inventing a reason and supporting theoretical framework for why I support Biden in this election that is mostly imaginary, just invented out of general theories and thin air, and lecturing me at length about how my own internal politics work (which isn’t how they work), and also about “the way” to do effective protest (which, sure, is fine, but is also in my opinion not the only way or guaranteed to be applicable and the perfect solution to every possible political / cultural situation.)
From time to time, you tell me something about my own thinking that is so wrong that I can point to some clear counterexample, but it hasn’t changed in any respect the main thrust of you explaining to me what my thinking is. I can say, look, I posted an article from Nader about how to withhold votes from Biden to get needed political outcomes; look, I showed support for slrpnk even though the general consensus there is largely just anti-voting-in-general, because I feel like they’re generally working for good and authentic about their beliefs, and so that is fine.
But no, none of that matters. You’ve already figured out what I believe, and you’ll tell me about it at length, whatever I have to say about it.
If you want to have a back and forth where the things you say are open to critique, and where you’re open to listening to me explaining my own views and the reasons for them instead of you breaking them down to me based on some general political theory that applies very little to my own thinking, then sure. But if you’re committed to this conduct and to lecturing – if the whole model is, you are right and I am wrong and you explain and I listen and say “yes sir” to your theories, which are above critique because they are already right – then there’s not a lot of point in us talking.
Yup, I’ve been there for a while bud.
total lack of self-awareness
My god welcome to the club. I gave up after he did it something like 4 times in a row to me. Strangest style of argumentation I’ve ever seen, incessantly whacking at strawmen that don’t exist. Glad you can see it too, I thought I was starting to lose it.