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r/leftist

▲ 6 r/leftist+1 crossposts

Can the electoral system be used to effect meaningful change?

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) deserve credit for helping elect some vaguely "progressive" sounding politicians, but in general their candidates conspicuously don't commit to supporting any concrete policies, and the result is that when they obtain office they tend to quickly become part of the old boys network they decried as candidates.

Suppose there was an organization similar to DSA, but one that required candidates to support key process reforms, as well as refuse PAC money and contributions from foreign interests. Reforms such as:

  • Members of Congress required to place investment holdings in a blind trust, with an absolute ban on stock trading while in office.
  • Forbid ex-members of Congress from becoming lobbyists for at least 12 years after leaving office.
  • End gerrymandering by requiring an independent commission to redraw Congressional districts.

I'd be interested to know if members of this community think that focusing on structural reform, as well as extracting specific commitments from candidates before making an endorsement, would lead to greater accountability from politicians, as well as greater focus on issues that matter to ordinary citizens.

reddit.com
u/JohnQNetizen — 3 days ago
▲ 55 r/leftist

I genuinely despise Democratic politicians for the way they respond to trans rhetoric from Republicans.

Today I saw an article about Annie Andrews, the Democrat North Carolina candidate running against Lindsay Graham's sister. Trump called her a slur, you know the one. And she responded by saying she "doesn't support biological men in women's sports and would never do surgery on a minor."

Peltola, of Alaska, has responded the same way to Republican trans-themed attacks on her.

Talarico too.

How fucking hard is it to just say, "Trans people are 1% of our population; 70% are suffering, let's focus on fixing that." Or something else wishy washy if you're trying to avoid controversy. Why. Why do they have to be like, "Me? No, me, I'm actually highly transphobic, no way I support those freaks."

How am I supposed to vote for a Democrat when this is the party line. It's not only unhinged, it displays an eager willingness to throw us under the bus for a sliver of the cult's votes. They would rather get 1% of MAGA than the 1% of trans people.

It's honestly so stupid and insulting and I have absolutely no hope for November, even if the D's win. Even if they stop the war, which they won't, and even if they impeach Trump, which they won't, they would still sacrifice us on the altar of appeasement than grow a spine and represent us.

It terrifies me, then, where we'll be in 4 years time. By 2030, how bad will things have gotten for us? I don't know, but I do know, nobody's gonna stop it. Fuck.

reddit.com
u/TwinkleMcSprinkle — 5 days ago
▲ 8 r/leftist

You can't be a leftist and mourn Charlie Kirk

I've been on here for awhile and the amount of "leftists" I've seen who actively mourn or say that Charlie Kirk didn't deserve it, is insane. Why mourn somebody whose entire goal was to spread hateful rhetoric throughout the u.s that ACTIVELY went against everything leftists stand for. And you miss me with that "he was a father!" bullshit.

reddit.com
u/lbugz_createz — 5 days ago
▲ 6 r/leftist

My macro Econ class is really out here trying to model human nature using standard neo liberal talking points. Oh brother 😑

The slideshow and textbook this week basically says that “welfare creates laziness” and framed it as a neutral macroeconomic fact. Shout out to Oregon’s mandatory standardized curriculum that teaches the labor-leisure trade-off as an objective law of human nature. No shade to my teacher he’s cool but oh jeez and it’s only week two. This is a picture of the slideshow, the textbook was so much worse in its rhetoric

u/angstygrl — 5 days ago
▲ 12 r/leftist

Thoughts on the Mass Rape at Cornell University - Chris Hedges

“The corporate world sees football players, fraternity brothers and sorority sisters as prime recruits. Students are conditioned to join the team, to surrender moral autonomy, to accept and carry out acts of personal humiliation, to treat with contempt those who oppose them or who are different, to define their life by an infantile narcissism centered on greed and self-promotion and to remain silent about crimes they witness or take part in.
It is the very ethic of corporations.
The ruling elite sees in Greek organizations and college sports programs the training ground for an amoral class of speculators, bankers and corporatists who pillage the country. The goal is to train people to subsume themselves into the herd, to unquestioningly use technical and vocational skills to serve the system.
These forces of conformity are hostile to the humanities, where students are taught to question assumptions and structures. The humanities prod students to seek a life of meaning and an ethical code that challenges the blind, utilitarian obedience to power and profit that corporations and the military instill.”

chrishedges.substack.com
u/lacroixxboi — 6 days ago
▲ 88 r/leftist

The Zohran hate is genuinely baffling to me.

Like I'm sorry your country is led by a wannabe fascist pig and his cult of personality, your standing on the world stage is collapsing, the economy is going to shit yet your pissed because The Zohran Mamdani the only good thing happening in US politics right now, the only person doing what he's promised etc made a tweet about "hey Jewish people also deserve to live yo" and now your all like "OH MY GOD HES AN ISRAELI TRAITOR ZIONIST HYPOCRITE, WHAT ABOUT :INSERT EVERY OTHER GROUP:" as if he doesn't constantly reaffirm his position that he believes everyone is equal and deserves a right to live and that there is a genocide in Gaza, like genuinely so FUCKING PERFORMATIVE it pisses me off you are FUCKING LUCKY to have him and yet your such fucking shitters, god I'm so pissed.

(Pic is one example and the comments I've seen under the tweet and under the post are FUCKING IDIOTIC!!)

u/Ill-Foot-2549 — 13 days ago
▲ 30 r/leftist+9 crossposts

What would your ideal online library collection look like?

If you could magic a library or online archive into existence, where all the work of tracking down texts from various different libraries and hard-to-find corners of the internet was done for you, what would the collection look like? And what would it be called?

I've helped digitize a fair few texts that were hidden away in physical libraries, and turned a lot of badly photo scanned books into nice to read books with hyperlinked chapters and footnotes, etc.

I've also been trying to help find a web developer up for building some cool online archives and a classic forum board for people to talk about them. So, I know this is a long shot, but if you have those skills and would like to be involved let me know e.g. the text linked below lists a bunch of already digitized texts that could be split off to start off some new archives:

Finally, are there any cool existing libraries that come close to your dream library? I'll quote a few that I know of below.

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Joseph A. Labadie Collection

One of the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive collections of its kind, with materials on anarchism, anti-colonialist movements, anti-war and pacifist movements, atheism and free thought, civil liberties and civil rights, ecology, labor and workers’ rights, feminism, LGBTQ movements, prisons and prisoners, the New Left, the Spanish Civil War, and youth and student protest.

The collection includes books, pamphlets, periodicals, and more, and is noteworthy for its printed ephemera and holdings of posters, photographs, sheet music, pinback buttons, and scrapbooks. It also includes important archival and manuscript material, as well as recordings of speeches, debates, oral histories, and protest songs. 

New material is added regularly through both purchase and donation, with the goal of filling gaps in the historical record, building on existing areas of strength, and meeting the current and emerging needs of researchers, instructors, activists, and others who use the Labadie Collection in the Special Collections Research Center. 

The Labadie Collection is named for Detroit labor organizer and anarchist Jo Labadie, who donated his personal library of books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, and memorabilia to the university in 1911. In 2000, we received a large donation of research materials from the National Transgender Library and Archives, adding to our already strong holdings.

---

May Day Rooms

Our archive focuses on social struggles, radical art, and acts of resistance from the 1960s to the present: it contains everything from recent feminist poetry to 1990s techno paraphernalia, from situationist magazines to histories of riots and industrial transformations, from 1970s educational experiments to prison writing.

We proceed from the understanding that social change can happen most effectively when marginalised and oppressed groups can get to know – and tell – their own histories “from below.” Our archival collections challenge the widespread assault on collective memory and the tradition of the oppressed. We aim to counter narratives of historical inevitability and political pessimism with living proof that that many struggles continue.

We run a public programme including archival projects, publications, film screenings, “scan-a-thons” for digitising archival material, workshops, talks and discussion, reading groups, and social nights, all of which encourage active and collective engagement with history of social movements.

---

Feminist Library

The Feminist Library is a large collection of feminist literature based in London. We are a library and community space and support research, activist and community projects.

In 2020 The Feminist Library celebrated 45 years of archiving and activism. Mainly volunteer run, we have created and looked after one of the most important collections of feminist material in the UK, and provided an inspiring learning and social space for thousands of people.

---

The Anarchist Library

theanarchistlibrary.org is (despite its name) an archive focusing on anarchism and anarchist texts.

Within the scope of our use of the term “anarchism” we have been quite broad, but broad does not mean infinite, and basically shrinks down to a set of ideas against the State and capital. This immediately rules out the so-called “anarcho-capitalism”, “anarcho-nationalism” and similar crap.

What is so special about this site?

The library provides a high quality online web browser version of the text along with various other formats, like PDFs, plain text, HTML, EPUB, and XeLaTeX. We actively encourage the DIY printing and the distribution of the texts, so there is no need to ask us for permission to use the texts.

The site provides a way for distributors and friends to change the layout of the PDFs and to create collections of an arbitrary number of texts (1 or more). See the bookbuilder page.

The site also provides an advanced search engine.

All these features come with some responsibility for the people who want to contribute to the library. We ask that uploaders contribute a logical representation of the text, with headings, emphasis, quotation blocks, etc. marked up appropriately. The site provides some tools (inside the web interface) to make this process easy, but some attention and some care is still required. Please be sure to read the manual if you plan to join the project for the mid- to long-term.

---

Sprout Distro

Sprout Distro is an anarchist zine distro (distributor) and publisher based in the occupied territory currently known as the United States.

We distribute zines (see: "What is a Zine?" if you are new to zines) as a way of contributing to the increased proliferation of anarchist projects and resistance. We primarily distribute zines via this website and in person at zine fests, book fairs, and other such events. We make all the zines we carry available as PDFs for folks to download, print, and distribute themselves.

About Our Distro

Our distro mainly focuses on anarchist tactics and skill-building. This means that we have a lot of zines on direct action, organizing, starting projects (ex: collectives, study groups, prisoner support projects), decision-making, street tactics, security, affinity groups, how we relate to each other, etc.

Get In Touch

We welcome feedback from folks, suggestions of zines to carry, new ways to distribute zines, and other projects we should know about. Contact us here.

---

Steal This Wiki

A collaborative update and rewrite of Abbie Hoffman's seminal work, Steal This Book. Plus, a collection of related books and essays e.g. books analysing this project's yippie anarchist roots.

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The Library of Unconventional Lives

An archive for collecting together stories of lives lived in unconventional ways. Which could mean something as simple as what it’s like to live on a narrow boat. Or it could mean someone hitchhiking around the world because it was the only way they knew how to process a tough childhood with their sanity intact.

u/WildVirtue — 11 days ago
▲ 3 r/leftist+1 crossposts

any critical responses/discussion to marx and his critique of idealism?

hello! i generally agree with Marx's critique on idealism and his historical materialism as a whole, but im only starting out with learning. whenever i try to search for critical discussions though i often get the same 5 articles. are there any contemporary critical discussions of historical materialism & marx and engels' critique of idealism? what should i be looking into to learn further? and are there any criticisms or "negative" discussions, papers, viewpoints etc on this topic too?

thank you!! i have so many questions but am finding it hard to kinda DIY this knowledge with no external support!

reddit.com
u/moombass — 10 days ago
▲ 13 r/leftist

What to do with this rage

I'm so angry at everything going on right now, I feel like I'm drowning. What are some productive ways to use this rage for good?

reddit.com
u/Miserable-Chain3554 — 13 days ago
▲ 0 r/leftist

We need to stop being the "Moral Police"

As someone who would proudly claim to be a leftist to anyone who might ask, we need to stop viewing the world and everything in it as black and white.

Because it's not.

I've seen, met and are friends with numerous people who are also leftists, and I'm not gonna lie, it's kind of concerning how dismissive most of us are and how we, who are "supposed" to be the empathetic ones, lack empathy as well. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are still a lot of people who would disagree with what I'm about to say, but I'm gonna say it now because nobody else will.

A lot of us are becoming exactly like Magats. Call it whatever you want, but this is real and very true. We might be wearing the opposite colors and holding completely different points of view, but we're becoming just as insufferable as they are. And what's worse, many of us aren't realizing this or are refusing to acknowledge it.

I've pondered this a lot. This didn't just come to me out of nowhere. I hate using this word, but really, some of us are becoming "too woke" to the point that we're becoming just as blind as the Magats are toward Trump.

I know how Magats are and how horrible they can be most of the time, but that's another topic for another time.

Also, this isn't in response to anything that has happened recently. This has been my observation for quite a while now.

I'm not saying this to provoke a reaction. I'm saying this because we REALLY need to be better.

I really want to go into detail about this topic, but I know it's gonna be futile anyway, so I'm not gonna do it.

But please! I'm begging everyone who can still think, we need to stop viewing the world as black and white. We're losing sight of the real enemy here. We NEED to do better. I know it seems like the people on the other side of this coin might be the enemy, but they're not. I assure you, they're really not.

reddit.com
u/Dweamers — 14 days ago
▲ 11 r/leftist+1 crossposts

Peter Thiel is disgusting for this!

Remember that “Building a Better America” PAC and the rest are funded by Silicon Valley and PETER THIEL!! This is a ploy to confuse an otherwise straightforward proposition with the idea that left leaning organizations support this. Don’t get confused. Make them pay. Yes on 40, thank you.

u/Repulsive_Bar_1703 — 13 days ago