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Shits going down in Syria (sh.itjust.works)
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[-] Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee 35 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Super embarrassing when HTS militants clap your RUSF ‘advisors’ and flex the looted AK-105s tricked out with western optics on Telegram, your Frogfoots and Hinds are smoking wrecks/busy in Ukraine instead of propping up your proxy dictatorship, and SAA et al run away so fast that warehouses of ATGMs get left behind intact.

And then there’s Wagner in Mali…

[-] Agent641@lemmy.world 27 points 1 month ago
[-] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 month ago

Old Bash doesn't seem to be ballin today

[-] vga@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)

Uh no thanks. It's hard to be sympathetic towards any official side of that war because they're all major assholes. Why do they only have socialists and islamists in those areas? Why hasn't liberalism and freedom taken root in the Near East?

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 28 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Can't imagine why the Middle East doesn't trust liberals, it's a real goddamn mystery.

Injects oil directly into his veins

[-] shezznazz@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Ask iran and iraq what happend to their Democratically elected leaders. Oh yeah, the west are massive gaslighters and couped many Democraticlly elected leader over fears of "communism" aka new age colonialism style resource extraction. The militants aren't the cause their the symptom.

[-] vga@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yeah, Iran's last democratically elected leader was Mohammed Mosaddegh, who upheld the most watered down and benign version of social democracy you can think of. He publicly opposed communism and really should've been an ally or at least a friend of the west.

CIA was out of their fucking minds when they fucked that one up.

[-] shezznazz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

There's absolutely no reason iran isn't our friend and Saudi Arabia (where literal wahabism is from which is a plague to the west but a bigger plague to the Muslims around the world with rich degenerate sheiks come over to tell us "authentic islam") buttt mosaddegh nationalised oil, and to west, it never mattered about morals, human rights. It was about who could extract the most native resources and give to some white asshole nepo baby

[-] trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

Liberalism and its "freedom" hasn't taken root because:

  1. Liberals fucked the whole region in the first place.

  2. Shareholder profits are not going to inspire the masses to take up arms and fight.

Liberalism cannot provide a better future for anyone, so the people turn towards the groups who try to provide a change.

Extremely funny you say this in this situation since there is a group here fighting for freedom and democracy but they're stinky reds, so you'll hate them.

[-] vga@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Extremely funny you say this in this situation since there is a group here fighting for freedom and democracy but they’re stinky reds, so you’ll hate them.

The other things you said can be accepted as opinions, but here I'll have to correct you: In this conflict, Bashar al-Assad is the socialist (Ba'athist), and the group "fighting for freedom and democracy", as you put it, is Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. They are a far-right islamist religious fundamentalist terrorist organization.

So essentially nobody in Syria is fighting for any sensible definition of democracy or freedom.

[-] trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

I was talking about AANES, not the "socialist" Assad or the clearly religious authoritarian groups in the area.

[-] Randelung@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

I liked the image I saw a few days back. Conservatives will play to your base needs (food/water, shelter, family), while Liberals/Socialists expect selflessness and assume all your needs are already met, including self-fulfilment.

Especially in the poorer and war torn regions of the world, the former is magnitudes more appealing. If non-extremist groups want to have a chance, they need to cover the bases first.

[-] verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

That's a good elevator speech, can I borrow it? Christmas dinner with my mom's side of the family is coming up quick.

[-] Randelung@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Of course, lemme look for the original.

E: can't find it anymore. It speaks about the top and bottom three layers of Maslow's pyramid and how liberals expect transcendence and selflessness, while conservatives falsely promise the bottom three layers and act like the rest don't matter.

[-] Doom@ttrpg.network 3 points 1 month ago

the fuck is wrong with socialism here?

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago

I can't speak for others, but I've seen nothing but death and hate under the banner of socialism: USSR, China, Venezuela, etc, the list goes on. What most non-crazy people seem to mean by "socialism" is liberalism with a strong social safety net and public services (e.g. Nordic countries, "Democratic socialists" like Bernie Sanders, etc), which is a separate thing altogether.

[-] vga@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

What most non-crazy people seem to mean by “socialism” is liberalism with a strong social safety net and public services (e.g. Nordic countries, “Democratic socialists” like Bernie Sanders, etc), which is a separate thing altogether.

Exactly, and specifically for this thread this is not quite the same socialism what Bashar al-Assad has been going for.

[-] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 1 points 1 month ago

It's funny how many of them seem to like national socialism

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 1 month ago

Bernie Sanders is a proper anti-capitalist not just social democratic capitalist. See: https://berniesanders.com/issues/corporate-accountability-and-democracy/

@noncredibledefense

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

He really isn't anti-capitalist, he's against concentrations of wealth generally, but he's absolutely in favor of our capitalist system, he just thinks there should be more rules so workers fare better. He's not a socialist, much as the right wants to think, he's just in favor of a large welfare system and high taxes on the wealthy. He doesn't want to fundamentally change our economic system, he just wants to make it more fair for his definition of "fair."

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 1 month ago

I agree he is not a socialist in the 20th century sense, but he clearly says that workers should have ownership stake in companies, which is not a capitalist sentiment. He advocates for employee ownership of companies. I also am aware of who his economic advisors on these issues are and they are very much anti-capitalist

@noncredibledefense

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

he clearly says that workers should have ownership stake in companies, which is not a capitalist sentiment

It absolutely is though. Partnerships have been a thing since pretty much forever, and a lot of publicly traded companies and some private companies hand out company stock as part of compensation. Employees owning stock isn't socialism, it's capitalism, and the goal is for employees' interests to be more aligned with the company's so overall profitability is higher.

Sanders is approaching it from an employee outcomes perspective, but it's still very much from a capitalist mindset.

He's not advocating for companies to be run democratically like they would under socialism, he's advocating for more profit sharing without meaningfully changing ownership.

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 1 month ago

I agree that giving alienable voting shares to workers isn't anti-capitalist. It becomes anti-capitalist when the voting rights over management and corporate governance are inalienable meaning they are legally recognized as non-transferable even with consent.

Here is a talk by people involved with Bernie Sanders politically about how all companies should be democratically controlled by the workers: https://youtu.be/E8mq9va5_ZE

Sanders supports worker co-op conversions

@noncredibledefense

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

Sure, and many capitalists support socialist ownership structures within an otherwise capitalist system.

I'm pretty supportive of laissez faire capitalism (with caveats; I consider myself a left-leaning libertarian), and I also agree that worker co-ops are a great idea in many cases. The important thing, to me, with capitalism is that profit motive drive the decision making process in a competitive market. Sanders seems to largely agree, he just wants more of that profit to make its way to the workers.

Socialism (generally speaking, I know socialism is a big tent), seeks to eliminate both the profit motive and competitive markets, seeing both as waste. From what I know of Bernie Sanders, he's not on board with that view of socialism, he just wants the average person to be better off.

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Remember: anti-capitalism ≠ socialism

Democratic worker co-ops are postcapitalist, but are also non-socialist because they are perfectly compatible with markets and private property. I'm suggesting that Sanders is authentically anti-capitalist, but he conflates his anti-capitalism with being socialist in a category error and thus buys into a false dichotomy.

All firms must be legally mandated to be worker coops on classical liberal inalienable rights theory grounds

@noncredibledefense

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

Worker co-ops are socialist, because the workers literally own the means of production. In fact, I argue they're about as pure as you can get with socialism, since there's no government getting in the way so it could theoretically exist in a stateless society.

Being compatible with capitalism does not preclude something from being socialist.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago

Here's the issue. Capitalist nations are afraid of socialism spreading, so they do everything they can to destroy them. The only ones who have every survived this pressure are authoritarian dictatorships who have isolated themselves from western influence. This creates a situation (that the media, being capitalist, spreads) where socialism always ends up as authoritarian. That doesn't have to be the case, but it does when anything else is destroyed. It's ignorant to think that this is the fault of socialism and not circumstances.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

Whether socialism results in authoritarianism because of the ideology or circumstances is irrelevant, the fact is that socialism generally ends in authoritarianism. It turns out that it takes a lot of force to transition a country from capitalism to socialism, so it's not surprising that this transition attracts authoritarians.

And yeah, it probably doesn't have anything to do with socialism itself, but on that transition. We see the same for other radical transitions. The problem isn't necessarily what you're transitioning to, but the process of transition and who is involved. Most countries in the world aren't socialist, so transitioning to socialism will be a radical change and will attract the worst kinds of leaders. So it's fair to criticize socialism precisely because a radical transition to it is highly likely to be fraught with authoritarianism.

Even transitions to liberalism runs that risk, but transitioning to liberalism has had a much better track record than transitioning to socialism.

That said, country-wide forms of socialism (arguably "pure" socialism) where capitalism is eradicated naturally come with a distillation of power in the government to control the flow of goods, and that concentration of power is what attracts authoritarians and is what's being opposed here. So socialism has a built-in problem that lends itself to authoritarianism. Yes, I know there are theoretical anarchist forms of socialism, but they usually have a transition period from an authoritarian system (big counter is libertarian socialism, but that's pretty "pie in the sky" IMO, as much as I respect Noam Chomsky).

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago

Whether socialism results in authoritarianism because of the ideology or circumstances is irrelevant, the fact is that socialism generally ends in authoritarianism. It turns out that it takes a lot of force to transition a country from capitalism to socialism, so it's not surprising that this transition attracts authoritarians.

The reason is because capitalists oppose it. If the world was ruled by Fascists you'd be saying we should try anything else because anyone opposed to Fascists gets undermined. It's a fault of capitalism, not socialism.

There have been many elected socialist democracies, but the West undermined them. We can have socialist countries without any issues. It just requires capitalists in the rest of the world not overthrowing them.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

There have been many elected socialist democracies, but the West undermined them

We're getting into very biased reporting territory.

Let's take Venezuela as an example. Here's the events as I understand them:

  1. Hugo Chavez takes power in 1999
  2. Venezuela becomes rich from oil (prices increased in early 2000s) and spends a ton on populist social programs (presumably to stay in power; corruption is rampant
  3. Rapid inflation and widespread shortages starting in 2010 due to over-reliance on imported goods and exported oil (oil prices started dropping in 2007) and no spending cuts after revenue shortfalls
  4. Maduro takes over in 2013 and is even more heavy handed and doesn't ease spending or improve anything economically
  5. Protests and unrest, which the government violently repressed, especially in 2015 when oil prices fell dramatically
  6. Sanctions due to human rights violations started in 2014-ish but really picked up steam from 2017-2019, which deepened the problems they already had, especially since the government refused to cut spending

Western sanctions only became a thing years (more like a decade) after they were already in crisis. The crisis wasn't caused by western countries, it was caused by mismanagement and corruption. Venezuela was held as a model for socialism under Chavez, but things only worked because of oil money.

I'm happy to discuss other countries as well.

[-] Doom@ttrpg.network 2 points 1 month ago

America.

Radical liberal George Washington and his gang of discovery daddies overthrow the just and fair and healthy rule of the king

Now you know none of that is true, but that's how you sound defending capitalism. All the death and destruction capitalism caused but they try to sell you on socialism being much worse. Which it is not, Capitalism has absolutely caused far more harm.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

All the death and destruction capitalism caused but they try to sell you on socialism being much worse.

Then you're obviously ignoring the death and destruction socialism has caused. Socialism has only been a thing for 100 years or so, and yet it has caused nearly 100M deaths (source: a libertarian publication referencing an infographic based on WHO data):

Curiously, all of the world's worst famines during the 20th century were in communist countries: China (twice!), the Soviet Union, and North Korea.

[-] Doom@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Lmfao

Capitalism has killed no one then?

The Atlantic slave trade, the human trafficking of today, the resource wars, the embargo and economic punishment of those who don't submit to capitalism, the imperialistic wars, violence from police states to uphold capitalism, drug overdoses, those dying of homelessness/lack of healthcare/food.

Plus if we track the metric used that anyone who died under socialism died from socialism as you do, then let's see 3 million people die a year in America multiply that by 100.

300,000,000 million deaths from capitalism in ONE single capitalist country over the last 100 years. (America). That's not factoring in the other nations or the actions they've caused outside of their country that also applies to this total.

60 million people die globally a year. We live in a capitalist global economy so it's safe to claim most of that total but let's play it safe. Only 40 million die under capitalism a year. Multiply that by 100 and

4 BILLION PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM CAPITALISM OVER THE LAST 100 YEARS

Wow sounds like socialism is the better option.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

The Atlantic slave trade

About 2M.

human trafficking of today

Socialist countries are near the top of the charts here, like N. Korea and Cambodia. The problem isn't due to any economic system, but the failure of law enforcement.

resource wars... violence from police states to uphold capitalism...

Not sure what you mean by this, specifically, and I'd prefer to not wade too far into vagaries.

embargo and economic punishment of those who don’t submit to capitalism

If you look at the actual reasons here, it's usually due to human rights violations, authoritarianism, or something along those lines (affiliation w/ the USSR, the US's main enemy, used to be sufficient). Russia has recently received massive economic punishment and they are absolutely capitalist, and they got those sanctions due to the aforementioned reasons.

imperialistic wars

You'll need to be a bit more specific to arrive at a number, but generally speaking, the death toll wasn't that high, and all combined is likely way less than the Great Chinese Famine, which was entirely man-made.

drug overdoses

What's interesting is that most of those deaths are from fentanyl, and China is the main manufacturer of the ingredients to make fentanyl. So production starts in China, gets distributed abroad, and then ends up in the US, probably because it's relatively easy to get drugs into the US due to the cartels' established networks.

This isn't a failure of capitalism, unless you're blaming Americans for having enough money to buy drugs. Fentanyl production in the US is practically non-existent, so it's not like it's a failure of policy either.

Here's the source I used for this.

those dying of homelessness/lack of healthcare/food.

China and the US have about the same homelessness rate, and the US has a lower rate than many other developed countries, like France and Germany (and quite notably New Zealand). That said, reporting varies by country, so these figures probably can't be fully trusted.

These are generally more symptoms of the state of the economy and has little to do with the actual economic system in place, and most of the top countries here are quite poor generally and most of the countries with the least homelessness are generally wealthy, and their are outliers everywhere.

if we track the metric used that anyone who died under socialism died from socialism as you do

But I don't, those figures are deaths directly attributable to socialism, such as famines caused by poor central planning. Deaths due to natural causes and things not directly related to the regime in charge aren't included.

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[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago

How about Guatemala.

Democratically elected leftist president who enacted a minimum wage and was going to redistribute land owned by The United Fruit Company to the people, since they owned most of the nation's land.

Couped with the support of the CIA and replaced by a dictator who went on to lead a genocide of the native people.

For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

Arévalo wasn't socialist, he was actually anti-communist and generally pro-capitalist. He had way more overlap with FDR than Stalin or Castro.

That wasn't "capitalists keeping the socialists down," it was cronyism and FUD from United Fruit Company, which Eisenhower bought into.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago

Hence why I said leftist, yes. It was an example of what happens to any leftist government, including but not limited to socialists.

Anyone who goes against the interests of capitalists is scary to them. They say (similar to what you said) that they must always fail. If this were true, they wouldn't be so scared.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It's important to take the broader context into account. This happened at the start of the Cold War, so anything that looked remotely connected to the USSR was suspect. Árbenz legalized a communist party, and that seems to be what pushed Eisenhower over the edge.

It had nothing to do with the actual ideology of the Guatamalan government, but suspected ties to USSR. At the time, "communism" meant "USSR," and anyone that was sympathetic to communism in any form was suspected of being in league with the USSR.

If the Guatamalan Revolution happened just 10 years or so later, the US probably would've been an ally instead of an enemy of someone like Árbenz.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The justification doesn't really matter. The point is this is the situation the makes "all socialist countries are bad" a belief people hold. It's wrong. It's "the only socialist countries who could survive capitalist intervention also did bad things. The ones that didn't last are forgotten and we can't know how they'd fare."

The reason why the Cold War was happening at all was because the US shoved themselves into a role of preventing "communism," which extended to any leftist government, from spreading. They needed to ensure socialism couldn't achieve its goals, because if it could then other capitalist countries would see the benefits and follow suit. Obviously the owner class in capitalist nations couldn't let that happen. You can even see it even within the US with the dismantling of leftist policy.

Socialism isn't bad. It's what capitalists forced socialism to be in order to survive that's bad. Capitalists are the issue with socialism. To use it as an argument for capitalism seems pretty fucked up. It also ignores all the harm done by capitalism. This mostly happens outside of the rich countries though, so most of us don't interact with it.

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[-] Doom@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 month ago

Lol reread your comment and tell me you aren't at least slightly influenced by propaganda.

You're literally giving a pass, an asterix to something you just don't wanna agree to.

If socialism has only existed for a short time, and really only considered during the cold war then has it really ever been actually tried since outside powers kneecap it at every turn?

Then I wanna ask, how many died from the introduction of capitalism/destruction of imperial European powers? We have no record of it but I'd bet my britches it's a lot of people

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Lol reread your comment and tell me you aren’t at least slightly influenced by propaganda.

It's impossible to escape, and I imagine you are also quite influenced by propaganda. The best I can do is look for multiple sources for information and avoid the worst offenders.

You’re literally giving a pass, an asterix to something you just don’t wanna agree to.

No, I'm just saying the situation in Guatamala is completely different because they weren't even socialist, and the elected President was openly capitalist. Eisenhower was an idiot here and gave in to United Fruit Company.

has it really ever been actually tried since outside powers kneecap it at every turn?

The context in the past 100 years was the USSR, which was the main rival and enemy of the US, so it absolutely makes sense for the US to attempt to stop any expansion by the USSR, and vice versa. Most of the interventions by the US into countries going through a socialist revolution were actually proxy wars w/ the USSR, like Korea and Vietnam. I don't think it would particularly matter if the USSR was socialist/communist or fascist, the they would butt heads over any expansion. Both the US and the USSR wanted to be the top superpower, and that's what all the interventionism was about.

Look at socialist revolutions after the fall of the USSR, there are far fewer, and those that happen have little if any opposition by western powers. Why is that? The USSR doesn't exist, and China doesn't seem particularly interested in backing socialist/communist revolutions, so they're generally left to resolve themselves. One significant counter example is the revolution in Nepal, but China also opposed that regime change, so it has little to do with socialism and more to do with how friendly the new regime would be to our (or China's) interests.

how many died from the introduction of capitalism/destruction of imperial European powers?

The proper answer to this would have to be in percents, not absolute numbers, because populations at the time were much lower. But yeah, I don't have a good figure for this.

One especially tricky part of this is that casualties of capitalism are much harder to associate with any particular group because capitalism is largely decentralized, whereas socialism/communism tends to be centralized. A failure under socialism/communism is much easier to assign a cause to than a failure under capitalism. The clearest examples are slavery in the Americas, but that actually started under mercantilism and was quickly abolished in the northern colonies after getting independence (i.e. the areas with higher development).

That said, liberalism and capitalism together have done wonders to improve the lives of the average person. There's a good reason why China has pivoted from socialism/communism to capitalism in recent decades, and it's because it works. Socialism seems to work best when paired with a capitalist system, such as in most developed economies (i.e. a robust social safety net, support for unions, etc).

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[-] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 points 1 month ago

I don't think people are expressing sympathy.

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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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