this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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The western "left" are nine of ten settler-descent. I genuinely don't know why we expect anything of them but the most ghoulish takes that don't belong to self-avowed democrats.
In North America and Australia yes, but the term settler does not apply in Europe for the most part, however i would argue that in Europe it's worse than just the settler chauvinism exhibited in the overseas colonies, they are out and out Euro supremacists in much of the European left.
The vast majority of social democrats i know (and most people here are some flavor of social democrat) have the exact same mentality as expressed by EU chief Borrel: "we are the garden they are the jungle". In fact a lot of Europeans even view the colonial nations like the US as being half part of that jungle, not quite barbarian but not truly civilized either.
European leftists make fun of the US for not having our social safety nets even while ours are crumbling around us. They are aghast at the US police killing black people with impunity, but they seem oblivious to how Europe is murdering African migrants by the hundreds as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean.
They point out with a smug feeling of superiority how racist Americans are, and then mere minutes later when the topic of the Romani people comes up they will sound like Adolf Hitler. They will decry how horribly warmongering the US is but then call for rearmament and war with Russia in the next breath.
I think support for Israel is stronger in North America because even most of those that call themselves 'hard left' are unwilling to see themselves as colonizers and part of the ongoing oppression. Sure they say they support rights for Native Americans... but how many are emmigrating? How many would cheer when their family or friends are killed for Native Americans to retake their land?
Deep down a lot of North Americans know they're just like the zionists but do the pro Palestine gig to compensate for this
And yet even with all of what you pointed out there is still more support for Palestinians in North America than there is in Germany. Perhaps the rest of Europe is better, i know Ireland definitely is, but in Germany it is catastrophic. It is almost illegal to express support for the cause of Palestine here, you can get in serious trouble if you call Israel an apartheid state, and most of the "left" with the sole exception of communists parrots the same "Israel has a right to exist and defend itself line".
European liberals have a weird relationship with the US. They have a grovelling admiration for the US system and the elite liberals running it and see them as high-minded defenders of lofty ideals of freedom and democracy and thank then from saving Europe from fascism and from communism. The people of the US on the other hand are seen as uncultured swines, a bunch of obese racists stuffing their faces with cheeseburgers, too dumb to build a welfare state, pass gun regulation or even point out where Mexico is on a map.
I tried to (ostensibly) semi-ironically drop a "social democracy is the objectively the left-wing of fascism" the other day, and got roundly condemned by self-described 'comrades' for even making the joke. People sometimes really are blind when they want to be.
I was reading a book by Enrique Lister, the Spanish Communist and Marxist-Leninist on Leninism and Opportunism. The key target of the book is the reformism and opportunism seizing the ostensible 'communist' parties in Europe during the growth of ultra, reformist and opportunist groups during the 70s and 80s, i.e. when 'eurocommunism' was becoming a thing. The French Communist Party (the PCF, only communist in name now) is a stand-out case, cos they were at a point filled with Marxist-Leninists and are now defending the fascist police unions and have just declared their solidarity with Israel. Externally the soc dems will always support imperialist projects, and internally they will always side with the fascists against us. They will cry economistic tears over inflation, but would dare question too hard motives or costs of the war in Ukraine, rampant Sinophobia, will never really challenge fascistic relations with the Roma, and continue to see Europe as a become of the social-democratic achievement, while being ridden with cognitive dissonance as they have supported the dismantling of the welfare state, or have only been willing to complain occassionally loudly about it.
Betrayal, opportunism and imperialism are in their political genetics. Literally. The more astute ones are aware that Europe's economic resources necessary for their paltry services and welfare are possible because of imperialist exploitation. This is most obviously true in the case of France. And those who aren't would accept it or make excuses the day they get power, because they do not pose any challenge to the capitalist order. This is proof that they are idealists, because they do not understand that you cannot simply will the end of imperialism and its violence by decree, but that it requires a change in the material conditions of the society. They do not see that they themselves are an expression of this system attempting to patch-up its own decay, that they are the final legitimators of the imperialist order.
What I don't get about this one is that we generally protest when liberals call Putin a fascist/Russia a fascist country (for example, there are other situations where we raise these protests) and say that "calling things that arent overt fascism fascism waters down the definition". But then we say this? It just seems to muddy the waters. Either all liberal democracies are fascist or liberal democracy is a separate but still bad thing. I would lean the later.
Like maybe I'm missing something here, but my objection to "social democracy is objectively the left-wing of fascism" has always been that it waters down the definition of fascism. Not that I disagree that socdems will cape for facism when it suits them, or that they will use fascists against us when it suits them. Just that its still separate from fascism definitionally.
Absolutely right. It has never been more transparently clear than it is today that social democracy is just the left wing of fascism.