#Populists

[tomorrowusa]

« Rightwing populists can often win the culture wars. But mishandling the economy is much harder to explain away. If Maga makes Americans poorer, Trump and his movement are likely to pay the price. »

— Gideon Rachman at the Financial Times (archived).

Always keep in mind James Carville's comment on the white board at Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign headquarters...

It's the economy, stupid.

Talking about democracy and DEI may get us some nods, but it's stuff that has economic impact that is far more likely to get us votes. And Trump is wasting no time in fucking over the US economy.

When possible, refer to tariffs as "the Trump tax", inflation as "Trumpflation", and tax cuts as "MAGA tax breaks for billionaires". Any effective messaging depends on repetition. So don't be shy about repeating.

The economy may not be your main issue, but not emphasizing the economy enough will result in in other issues being undercut.

[florencekinnie-slash-hj]

I looked up Hasan on here because I thought there would maybe be some fun fanart or some interesting political takes

Instead it’s a bunch of horny shit

[askbensolo]

how is your mom's job

I am continuing to resist my mother’s clear will for me to join her office staff. I told her that once I post my novel, I’m gonna go right back to job hunting.

I already told you I don’t want to work an administrative job. No offense…but to me those are jobs where you don’t really do anything. You just do stuff so that other people can do stuff: put things on the calendar, make purchase orders, fill the caf machine. It just doesn’t seem fulfilling.

The other thing is…I don’t want to work in politics. Yeah, yeah—I know I was the Politics Hyperfixation Guy for a long time—but I’m kinda over it at this point. I think I liked politics so much because I was thirteen and I didn’t understand how they played out in the real galaxy. In the year 30 ABY, it’s just depressing.

Fannie and I used to argue because she didn’t really care about politics. (Granted, she’s not a New Republic citizen—but she didn’t even know who the Rylothian emissary was.) I thought she was just being, y’know, a bury-your-head-in-the-sand Jedi freak…but honestly, a lot of it is worthless. Bipartisanship is dead. The Populists and the Centrists fight way too much to get anything done. And it feels like everything they do accomplish is only done in the name of, like, owning the other party.

At this point, I think the New Republic just needs to split in half. Let the Centrists go their own way and build a government the way they want it, and all the worlds that want to be under Centrist government can follow them. And then the Populists can do what they want to do, and all the worlds that want to be under Populist principles can stay in the New Republic. Everyone’s happy!

Mom disagrees. She says that she would rather live in a governing system where people of different perspectives can come together and compromise, instead of separating over irreconcilable differences.

“Besides,” she said, with something like fire in her eyes, “I am not letting my babies live through a second Galactic Civil War.”

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

The real socialism, created not by theoreticians and stupid populists, but by communists, looked like this - empty shops and poor residents, while "leaders" enjoyed the benefits created by "capitalists" in special stores: The uniqueness of this photo is that it shows not only a "happy" Russian past, but also their "bright" future towards empty shops and mass poverty... Soviet Union, after WWII (sometime after WWII, a Russian store could look so empty both in the 1950s and just as well in the 1980s)

P.S. No matter how ridiculous it is, there have always been quite a lot of political idiots useful to the Kremlin in the West, who believe that they should befriend with Moscow...In the modern West, the role of this useful idiots has been taken on by various not only left-wing socialists and communists, but also by right-wing and ultra-right-wing foolish populists...

[feckcops]

No, capitalism isn’t democratic

“The progress brought by democracy and capitalism was supposed to give rise to yet more democracy. Checks and balances would put an end to corruption. An educated population would choose the ‘right’ leaders. And rather than campaigning based on outdated ideologies, those leaders would compete for votes by appealing to the ‘median voter’, bringing moderation to previously divided societies.

“Instead, corruption is on the rise, ideology is back, and people keep picking the ‘wrong’ leaders. Perhaps the creation of societies so stratified that the ruling class can barely comprehend the concerns of ordinary voters was not such a foolproof recipe for democracy after all ...

“Despite the fact that it is blindingly obvious that capitalist democracies require some measures to reduce inequality while tackling climate breakdown, the progressive capitalist vision for the future stands no chance of being implemented.

“There’s only one conclusion left to draw—that capitalism and democracy were never really all that compatible to begin with.”

[russia-libertaire]

Russian Populism

"The central populist goals were social justice and social equality. Most of them were convinced, following Herzen, whose revolutionary propaganda in the 1850s influenced them more than any other single set of ideas, that the essence of a just and equal society existed already in the Russian peasant commune - the obshchina organised in the form of a collective unit called the mir. The mir was a free association of peasants which periodically redistributed the agricultural land to be tilled; its decisions bound all its members, and constituted the cornerstone on which, so the populists maintained, a federation of socialised, self-governing units, conceived along the lines popularised by the French socialist Proudhon, could be erected."

'A Remarkable Decade', in Russian Thinkers, by Isaiah Berlin

[skull-pun]

Spineless worm.

[tomorrowusa]

Rodrigo Duterte, autocratic former president of the Philippines, has been arrested and is being flown to The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity. 👍🏼

Philippine police have arrested former President Rodrigo Duterte after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity over his deadly "war on drugs". The 79-year-old was taken into police custody shortly after his arrival at Manila airport from Hong Kong. He has offered no apologies for his brutal anti-drugs crackdown, which saw thousands of people killed when he was president of the South East Asian nation from 2016 to 2022, and mayor of Davao city before that. [ ... ]

The ICC earlier said that it has jurisdiction in the Philippines over alleged crimes committed before the country withdrew as a member. But activists called the arrest a "historic moment" for those who perished in his drug war and their families, the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) said. "The arc of the moral universe is long, but today, it has bent towards justice. Duterte's arrest is the beginning of accountability for the mass killings that defined his brutal rule," said ICHRP chairman Peter Murphy. Duterte had been in Hong Kong to campaign for the upcoming 12 May mid-term elections, where he had planned to run again for mayor of Davao. Footage aired on local television showed him walking out of the airport using a cane. Authorities say he is in "good health" and is being cared for by government doctors.

Holding rogue leaders accountable is essential if there is to be such a thing as the rule of law. The arrest of Duterte is a major step forward.

Duterte's arrest marks the "beginning of a new chapter in Philippine history", said Filipino political scientist Richard Heydarian. "This is about rule of law and human rights," he said.

As president he may have killed as many as 6,000 people without trial. And that doesn't count his time as mayor of Davao.

Duterte served as mayor of Davao, a sprawling southern metropolis, for 22 years and has made it one of the country's safest from street crimes. He used the city's peace-and-order reputation to cast himself as a tough-talking anti-establishment politician to win the 2016 elections by a landslide. With fiery rhetoric, he rallied security forces to shoot drug suspects dead. More than 6,000 suspects were gunned down by police or unknown assailants during the campaign, but rights groups say the number could be higher. A previous UN report found that most victims were young, poor urban males and that police, who do not need search or arrest warrants to conduct house raids, systematically forced suspects to make self-incriminating statements or risk facing lethal force. Critics said the campaign targeted street-level pushers and failed to catch big-time drug lords. Many families also claimed that the victims - their sons, brothers or husbands - were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Investigations in parliament pointed to a shadowy "death squad" of bounty hunters targeting drug suspects. Duterte has denied the allegations of abuse. "Do not question my policies because I offer no apologies, no excuses. I did what I had to do, and whether or not you believe it... I did it for my country," Duterte told a parliament investigation in October.

Duterte took the law into his own hands. Now he's in the hands of the law.

Donald Trump can't be too happy about the arrest of Duterte and that of impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea.

Duterte idolized Trump and Putin and appeased China.

His populist rhetoric and blunt statements earned him the moniker "Donald Trump of the East". He has called Russian President Vladimir Putin his "idol" and under his administration, the Philippines' pivoted their foreign policy to China away from the US, its long-standing ally. Marcos restored Manila's ties with Washington and criticised the Duterte government for being "Chinese lackeys" as the Philippines is locked in sea dispute with China.

Duterte's daughter Sara is the current vice president of the Philippines. She is being impeached for corruption and for making death threats against President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr..

Philippines feud escalates as lawmakers vote to impeach vice-president

The arrest of wannabe dictators should make Trump look over his shoulder more often.

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

The 5 Laws of Human Stupidity That You Must Know!

Learn about the 5 basic laws of human stupidity according to renowned historian Carlo M. Cipolla. With examples from history, discover the logic (or lack thereof) behind human foolishness. From the rise of Nazi Germany to everyday life, these laws will change the way you think about stupidity forever.

[fauvester]

sorry boss cant go to work today. thinking about deathsaurus. yeah. yup in every continuity including the butch trucker human one in my mind

[ilions-end]

euripides' hecuba will be my first athenian play of the year. oof this is gonna hurt, isn't it

also the opening segment talking about "that wily knave, that honey-tongued demagogue Odysseus"... one day i'm gonna run out of ancient plays and i'm going to miss athen's wickedly pragmatic shitheel odysseus so much. i find him as interesting as the homeric one at this point

[russia-libertaire]

Plekhanov's scientific socialism

'A cardinal tenet of the revolutionary movement up to the early 1890s had been that Marx's teaching on historical evolution did not apply to Russia, whose communal institutions would enable it to build a socialist society without going through the stage of "bourgeois capitalism" and without creating an alienated and poverty-stricken proletariat, such as had been seen in Britain, the United States, and, more recently, Germany. The first revolutionary figure to question this doctrine was Georgii Plekhanov, the man who had rejected terrorism [at a congress of Zemlia i Volia] in 1879. In a series of studies written on emigration in the 1880s he argued that Russia had already entered the era of bourgeois capitalism and was creating a modern industrial system, including a proletariat of the kind Marx had described. As for the commune, it was only the remnant of a dying economic system, already being destroyed by the pressures of capitalism. Only when capitalism had exhausted its potential and the proletariat had expanded and matured would revolution become possible: to try to bring it about before then was to act in a premature and irresponsible manner. Plekhanov believed that only his version of Marxism had the right to be called "scientific socialism," and he disdainfully wrote off the revolutionaries of the period up to 1881 as narodniki, "the people worshippers." Though translated more respectfully as "populists," the word is still commonly used for all non-Marxist Russian revolutionaries. His assertions launched a lively debate in the 1890s between the "populists," who held that Russia had its own distinctive path of social evolution, and the "Marxists," who believed that it would follow the same road as other European countries, though with some delay caused by its relative backwardness. Plekhanov's view appealed to those who liked to regard themselves as "scientific" and to those who wished to see themselves as part of an international scene, to escape from the claustrophobia of insisting on Russia's distinctiveness. But there was a serious drawback to his doctrine: if Russia was to wait till it had a numerous and "mature" proletariat, then revolution would have to be delayed for decades, at least. In the meantime the revolutionaries would be obliged to welcome the growth of capitalism and of bourgeois liberalism as progressive developments. Most revolutionaries were not so patient or understanding.'

Russia and the Russians, by Geoffrey Hosking

[dostoyevsky-official]

Do you realise they're still sending deported Colombians? What exactly did they win. petro talks like a populist and trump is fascist clown.

this whole row was over using military planes and deportees shackled to the seats, instigated by lula, not petro, and disproportionate US force. the US has tentatively agreed not to use military planes and shackled deportees, after threatening tariffs and sanctions to get its way. it's the last point that's been rebuked, and the more countries can see that you can gang up on america, the better.

but you're right, all deportations are bad, even those done on commercial flights. as an aside, "ICE detained more than 149,700 people in the 2024 fiscal year under the Biden administration (x)," whose "4.4 million repatriations were more than any single presidential term since the George W. Bush administration" by the middle of last year. (x) hundreds of those deportations were done through flights to colombia.

[shellem15]

GOD LIBERALS ARE SO STUPID.

Gavin Newsom is a psychopath who would send every homeless person to a meat grinder if he got the chance. I hate this aesthetic bullshit STOP IT MAKE GOOD POLICY FUCKING DO SOMETHING THAT HELPS PEOPLE

[tomorrowusa]

On Friday Ireland held elections for the Dáil Éireann (or Dáil for short) – the lower and principal chamber of the country's parliament. The result was that the two mainstream parties which lead the current coalition actually improved their standings slightly. With vote counting completed late Monday, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are now just 2 seats short of a majority of the recently enlarged 174 member Dáil. They will be soliciting support among the 16 independents or negotiate an agreement with one of the smaller parties; Labour (the most likely partner) with 11 seats would provide them with a stable majority consisting of 97 seats.

All over the western world, incumbent governments have been given a kicking over the cost of living crisis. But in the Irish election, where the counting of results concluded yesterday, it’s a very different story. Not long ago, Sinn Féin appeared on course to win the popular vote and become the leading party in a new coalition, but its support fell away badly earlier this year. Instead, Ireland’s traditionally dominant parties of the centre-right, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, appear to have it sown up again.

The Guardian's Dublin correspondent Lisa O’Carroll spoke with political science Prof. Gail McElroy on why the leftist-nationalist Sinn Féin fell in support.

Migration is a really difficult issue for them. Sinn Féin are unusual in that they are a leftwing nationalist party. Typically, nationalist parties tend to be on the right and nativist … happy to redistribute money but only to people of a given nationality. Sinn Féin, on the other hand, have quite a socialist economic agenda, which is at odds with that. Lisa said: “They tried to reset their migration policy in July by saying that asylum seekers should be housed in wealthier areas that have more resources available. But it was too late. Many inner-city communities say that Sinn Féin has abandoned them, and when that becomes established as a view it is hard to change.”

So Ireland's main populist party was hurt by the softer line it took on migration. Parties in Western democracies who don't understand the public demand for a slowdown in migration are going to suffer – and it doesn't matter what their party ideology may be.

Here's a graphic from Ireland's public broadcaster RTÉ which shows the composition of the just elected Dáil.

FF = Fianna Fáil SF = Sinn Féin FG = Fine Gael GP = Green Party LAB = Labour Party SD = Social Democrats PBP-SOL = People Before Profit-Solidarity AON = Aontú II = Independent Ireland IND = independents OTH = other

[goblin-hart]

I'm in uni rn and I'm sure posting smth political will come to bite me in the ass but it's incredibly frustrating to have basically all my classes point to modern capitalism as the problem™.

And it's frustrating bc when I start talking about revolution people look at me like i'm a raving rabid dog foaming at the mouth asking to carpet bomb civilians. Even some of the profs teaching me these things.

So many people are willing to acknowledge the government and economy need to change (and are the problem) and yet so so few are willing to pursue that thought anywhere near action. Even so far as to vote for a 3rd party.

Like literally all my classes back up with proof bribery of politicians, rich lobbying outweighing the wants and needs of citizens and non-citizens alike, political censorship, the willingness of the government to repress free speech, the near conspiracy level that northern governments manage to maintain the poverty of the south, that this has been a problem for over 100 years, that politicians have been ignoring their own promises for over at least since the 1880s in the US.

And somehow- we with all the money- have a huge portion of the population barely surviving, homeless, begging people for medical support, etc.