#American liberals

[motziedapul]

This is a great example of "scratch a liberal and a Nazi bleeds" because what do you mean you want deportations for Brown people and gleefully celebrate the killing of Palestinians as long as it's under Trump while pretending it wasn't happening under Biden?

Biden sure did show Israel by sending 20 billion dollars to them in 2024, providing 70% of all their major arms, and wagging his finger telling them "oh you better not kill more than 15000 children with these"!

And you sure showed me, a Filipino, how much you want to blame Palestinians for their own slaughter!

Awesome job @autumnalhalcyon! You've proven a wonderful point!

The point being that you only care about Palestinians when you can throw them under a bus. Congrats. I'm sure you're a wonderful person who spits on people who lost 80 family members to a Biden-Harris backed genocide and blames them for Harris running a terrible campaign. Definitely not a Nazi. "It's their fault Biden-Harris killed their families, they only have themselves to blame" is a great take.

Thank you for saying this so that whenever people search your name on Tumblr, they will now see your hatred for immigrants and Palestinians when they're not useful to your election, and your celebration for Trumpian policies so long as it affects people you're mad at.

[paranormeow7]

liberal hunger games posting is so funny because like. the hunger games are sold as books for teenagers. these are generally basic political statements about war and capitalism and exploitation meant to be understood by teenagers. these are not radical stances. we should have all learned these things by now. but one thing I have noticed is that the American public just simply do not know a lot of things about the world that other people already know, and even more embarrassingly, they end up needing to learn these things from children’s media. It’s not a good look to realize that you need to be kind to others because you watched a Bluey episode about it at the age of 25.

[lordnot]

Watching the White Liberal reaction to Biden as it compares to Trump and Obama before him is pretty illuminating when you think about it.

With Obama, the thing that got them excited was never "Change We Can Believe In". Otherwise they would have been upset or at the very least disappointed when his administration largely continued the Clinton and Bush-era policies before them. No, Obama's value to them was that he showed the world just how utterly Enlightened we all were now. He was Black, he was young, he was well-spoken. You could put him on a poster with Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and beam with pride. Progress. The Dream Fulfilled. Whatever systemic problem people pointed out about America, they could say, "Yes, but look: we have a Black President. We are heading in the right direction. Things can only get better from here."

In contrast, Trump refused to allow them any illusions about who he was and what his Presidency said about our country. And that, above all else, was what they hated him for. They couldn't pretend that the Kids in Cages was accidental after he called Mexican immigrants rapists. They couldn't pretend our Imperialist efforts around the world were about being charitable and protective while he was calling places "Shithole Countries" and demanding that other countries pay more into NATO. He had no interest in pretending his political appointments were about anything other than repaying his donors and friends, filling his cabinets with blatantly incompetent sleazebags.

Biden being another old White guy doesn't have the same appeal as Obama, but they'll settle for the "Most Progressive President Since FDR" moniker. They can again pretend that he genuinely wants the Kids out of their Cages, but Republicans and Red Tape are getting in the way. That his heart genuinely bleeds for the people of Ukraine and the hostages in Gaza. Never mind whether anyone who lied us into Iraq faced consequences or is still in power. And just look how progressive he has been! He tried very, very hard to reduce student debt! Stood on a picket line for the Railroad Auto Workers! Said some nice things about de-criminalizing marijuana! Does any of it lead to real, tangible changes? Maybe not, but it props up the "heading in the right direction" narrative. And that's what's important to them.

[memingursa]

Gotta admit the headline is a banger.

[help-me-find-a-name-please-lol]

Hero of the Year 2025

I'm calling it early - I doubt anyone will beat The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde

(I sure hope I've addressed her correctly)

For the most stunning act of bravery, class, integrity, and speaking truth to power that has graced the USA in far too long.

Not a single shake in her voice as she spoke directly to one of the most vengeful, spiteful, and (unfortunately) powerful people on the planet, while also receiving glares of hate and outrage from the despicable VP and his wife.

It's not the first time she's stood up for what is right in defiance of trump's actions, but while many may speak out on it, there have been scarcely any with the backbone to follow through on the opportunity to do it to his face, and especially on live television. She had her moment, and she didn't waste it.

May she be the inspiration we all take forward with us into the turbulent times ahead.

[hummussexual]

The Most Dangerous Thing In The Western Hemisphere

[cyarskj1899]

From IG annabodneydesign

[thenewdemocratus]

Korean 701: Liberal Democracy is Important

. Source:FRS FreeState Liberal Democrat which is how I describe my personal politics and personal political philosophy. And what that means because liberalism and what it means to be a Liberal means different things to different people. To lets say today’s so-called Progressives, liberalism is about government creating all sorts of programs to take care of people. I’m putting that loosely, but…

[emjee]

Thinking about how the main character of Conclave is a man with doubts who is not enjoying himself and his name is Thomas Lawrence which in terms of saints translates to Man With Doubt Being Roasted Alive. It’s so on the nose and I absolutely love it and wouldn’t change it for the world.

[motziedapul]

"I don't want to see the exploded children that Zionists beheaded and burned alive with Biden-Harris admin paid American bombs I just wanna vote for the woman sending the bombs and being paid millions of dollars by Zionists to represent them without feeling any sort of guilt or consideration for the people she directly helped slaughter, including 14 pages of 0 year old babies"

[afriblaq]

Hidden History

[molten222]

[unsolicited-opinions]

Leftist antisemitism is a symptom - American Jews and the Illiberal Left

TLDR: I think we would be wise to stop regarding leftist antisemitism only in its own context and habitually recognize it is a part of a larger issue, the rise of the illiberal left.

Why are Jews are the most reliable supporters of Liberal policies and politicians in modern American history?

Haviv Rettig Gur seems to suggest that Jews in the US, recognizing that Liberal values resulted in their (imperfect but historic) emancipation in the US, became perhaps the most Liberal people ever. They understood that US Liberal values were what made Jews relatively safe in the US, and offered them opportunities which had been denied to them everywhere else.

When previously did a head of state speak to Jews the way George Washington did?

Gur suggests that this is why American Jews have historically been so invested in the struggle of black folks in the US. When I say invested, I'm talking about facts like these:

- Henry Moscowitz was one of the founders of the NAACP.

- Kivie Kaplan, a vice-chairman of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now called the Union for Reform Judaism), served as the national president of the NAACP from 1966 to 1975.

- From 1910 to 1940, more than 2,000 primary and secondary schools and 20 Black colleges (including Howard, Dillard and Fisk universities) were established in whole or in part by contributions from Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. At the height of the so-called "Rosenwald schools," nearly 40 percent of Black people in the south were educated at one of these institutions.

- Jews made up half of the young people who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964.

- Leaders of the Reform Movement were arrested with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida in 1964 after a challenge to racial segregation in public accommodations.

- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched arm-in-arm with Dr. King in his 1965 March on Selma.

- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were drafted in the conference room of Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, under the aegis of the Leadership Conference, which for decades was located in the RAC's building.

When I was a child and asked my mother why Jews seemed overwhelmingly to be Democrats, I was told "because of FDR and the Civil Rights movement." That's not wrong, in Gur's framing, but perhaps a more shallow response than the question deserves.

In Gur's framing, US Jews realized that the promises of Liberalism, over and over, no matter how much they delivered for other peoples, did not deliver for black Americans.

Gur suggests that US Jews worked to see that change for their black co-citizens because if American Liberalism didn't deliver for black Americans what it appeared to promise to all Americans, the sense of safety, security, and belonging which Jews felt in the US was an illusion.

US Jews believed that we had common cause with non-Jewish American Liberals. We thought non-Jewish liberals believed what we believed about universal civil rights, pluralism, enlightenment values and enlightenment reason. When Jews saw the "In this House We Believe" signs on our neighbors' lawns, We felt comforted because those beliefs are also our beliefs.

We thought, for instance, that our non-Jewish friends agreed that Liberal democracies were better for human rights than any form of government in the history of human societies. We thought they agreed that religious, racial, and ethnic intolerance were social ills which needed to be fought with information. We thought they valued data, reason, and reliable sources.

Since 10/7/23, we've been learning that we were mistaken. We've seen gentiles who we thought shared our values seem to discard those values.

We saw college educated friends share antisemitic (and alarmingly familiar) conspiracy theories about Israeli puppetry of US politics and the return of Nazi and Soviet antisemitic slogans/images.

We've seen highly educated "Liberals" preach ahistoric nonsense denying that the Jewish people are from the Levant and willfully ignoring the huge swaths of historical fact which don't support their favored narrative.

We've seen friends rage against "globalists" and "Zionists," when what they mean is 'Jews'.

We've seen people who we thought were allies against all forms of racism justify their racism towards Jews as righteous through specious reasoning like 'I don't hate Jews, just the 97% of Jews who believe that Jews should have self-determination in their homeland.'

We've been told that we cannot ask them to temper their use of antisemitic tropes, because doing so "weaponizes" concerns about antisemitism to obstruct them from their righteous crusade against the most evil nation on earth...which happens to be the only Jewish nation.

Despite this, about 80% of Jewish voters voted for Harris over Trump.

I think US Jews will continue to be Liberals, because Liberal values are dear to us and aligned with our values as Jews, as a historically oppressed minority, and as Americans who see more clearly than some others the gap between the promise of American liberalism and its long-delayed universal delivery.

The problem, I think, is in how many of our former friends simply aren't Liberals any longer.

I think Jews in the US need to spend a good deal more time scrutinizing the illiberal left.

Nine days after the attacks of 10/7/23, Jonathan Chait wrote:

Writers like Michelle Goldberg, Julia Ioffe, and my colleague Eric Levitz, all of whom rank among the writers I most admire, have written anguished columns about the alienation of Jewish progressives from the far left. I think all their points are totally correct. But I find the frame of their response too narrow. They are treating apologias for Hamas as a factually or logically flawed application of left-wing ideals. I believe, to the contrary, that Hamas defenders are applying their own principles correctly. The problem is the principles themselves.

...

Liberals believe political rights are universal. Basic principles like democracy, free speech, and human rights apply equally to all people, without regard to the content of their political values. (This of course very much includes Palestinians, who deserve the same rights as Jews or any other people, and whose humanity is habitually ignored by Israeli conservatives and their American allies.) A liberal would abhor the use of political violence or repression, however evil the targets.

...

The illiberal left believes treating everybody equally, when the power is so unequal, merely serves to maintain existing structures of power. It follows from their critique that the legitimacy of a tactic can only be assessed with reference to whether it is being used by the oppressor or the oppressed. Is it okay for, say, a mob of protesters to shout down a lecture? Liberals would say no. Illiberal leftists would need to know who was the speaker and who was the mob before they could answer.

...

One observation I’ve shared with many analysts well to my left is that the debate over this illiberalism and the social norms it has spawned — demands for deference in the name of allyship, describing opposing ideas as a form of harm, and so on — has tracked an older debate within the left over communism. Communism provided real-world evidence of how an ideology that denies political rights to anybody deemed to be the oppressor laid the theoretical groundwork for repression and murder.

There have been conscious echoes of this old divide in the current dispute over Hamas. The left-wing historian Gabriel Winant has a column in Dissent urging progressives not to mourn dead Israeli civilians because that sentiment will be used to advance the Zionist project. Winant sounds eerily like an old communist fellow traveler explaining that the murders of the kulaks or the Hungarian nationalists are the necessary price of defending the revolution. “The impulse, repeatedly called ‘humane’ over the past week, to find peace by acknowledging equally the losses on all sides rests on a fantasy that mourning can be depoliticized,” he argues, calling such soft-minded sentiment “a new Red Scare.” Making the perfect omelette always requires some broken eggs in the form of innocent people who made the historical error of belonging to, or perhaps being born into, an enemy class.

But more than three decades have passed since the Soviet Union existed or China’s government was recognizably Marxist. And so the liberal warning about the threat of left-wing illiberalism seemed abstract and bloodless. On October 7, it suddenly became bloody and concrete. It didn’t happen here, of course. The shock of it was that many leftists revealed just how far they would be willing to follow their principles. “People have repeated over and over again over the last few days that you ‘cannot tell Palestinians how to resist,’” notes (without contradicting the sentiment) Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of the left-wing Jewish Currents. Concepts like this, treating the self-appointed representative of any oppressed group as beyond criticism, are banal on the left. Yet for some progressive Jews, it is shocking to see it extended to the slaughter of babies, even though that is its logical endpoint. The radical rhetoric of decolonization, with its glaring absence of any limiting principles, was not just a rhetorical cover to bully some hapless school administrator into changing the curriculum. Phrases like “by any means necessary” were not just figures of speech. Any means included any means, very much including murder.

Both Julia Ioffe and Eric Levitz have pointed out that decolonization logic ignores the fact that half of Israel’s Jewish population does not have European origins and came to Israel after suffering the same ethnic cleansing as the Palestinians. This is correct. But what if it weren’t? If every Israeli Jew descended from Ashkenazi stock, would it be okay to shoot their babies?

The problem is much greater than leftist antisemitism. The illiberal left has become nearly as great a threat to Liberalism as the far right.

It is often the case that a movement’s treatment of Jews serves as a broader indicator of its health. It’s not an accident that the Republican Party has become more attractive to antisemites as it has grown more paranoid and authoritarian. What the far left revealed about its disposition toward Jews is not just a warning for the Jews but a warning for all progressives who care about democracy and humanity. The pro-Hamas left is not merely indicating an indifference toward Jews. It is revealing the illiberal left’s inherent cruelty, repression, and inhumanity.

I'm annoyed that it is has taken me so long to catch on and alarmed by the implications.

I am, however, very proud of my 14yo, who sums up her experience trying to respectfully disagree with leftists this way:

"They're allergic to nuance."

[memingursa]

[wetsocksinbed]

I genuinely forget that there are Republicans/Trump Supporters on this app. I’m so used to seeing LGBT, feminist, blm, leftist stuff on here that going through a comment section and seeing people be vehemently against Harris because she’s A) a woman, B) black, and C) Democratic, gives me such whiplash. I’m not American, so American politics are already incredibly wild and insane, but to see blatant racism and just straight up misinformation (Harris was in fact NOT a cop, and she has been strongly advocating for a ceasefire for a LONG time) is just…wild

[alwaysbewoke]