“Third Way” (mentioned in the image) is the idea that left progressive politics are fully compatible with private interests/Capitalism. It’s basically Ayn Rand free market philosophies restamped as a leftist ideal.
I listened to some clip from a thirdway person today. I’ll try to find it. The dude unironically was talking about how they were vital in fighting Bernie Sanders and getting Hillary Clinton to win the primary. Like, straight up, “we’ll fucking do it again” kind of vibes.
Hillary Clinton fucking lost to Trump. Like, he was literally boasting about getting Trump elected basically.
Fuck, I gotta find the clip. It was wild.
Edit: Found it. Skip to 3:55 for the part about Sanders.
Thirdway could maybe be classified as “free market” neoliberals back in like 2016 or 2020. But it’s 2026, they are nothing but supporting fascist at this point. They are currently focused on fighting the only group in the country successful at fighting Trump and increasing voter turnout. I don’t know what else to call them besides fascist sympathizers.
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Nevermind, I am in fact blind.
The worst part about how the conservative Democrats are behaving here is that it’s not their party. They hijacked the party. In the '80s and '90s the “New Democrat” neoliberals took over the Democratic Party. They took over a party that had ushered in the greatest period of prosperity in American history. And they destroyed it. The party of FDR was murdered by these conservative Democrats and their neoliberal policies.
Book suggestion. The Democrats: A critical history. -by Lance Senfa
Spoilers: The Democratic Party has never been good, it’s just been rehabilitated through a mainstream rewriting of / popular history
FDR was a genocidal freak too though and that prosperity you speak of was only for white men.
Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour
The New Deal, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, saved capitalism. It was put in place because socialists were a strong and serious threat. The oligarchs understood that with the breakdown of capitalism—something I expect we will again witness in our lifetimes—there was a possibility of a socialist revolution. They did not want to lose their wealth and power. Roosevelt, writing to a friend in 1930, said there was “no question in my mind that it is time for the country to become fairly radical for at least one generation. History shows that where this occurs occasionally, nations are saved from revolution.” In other words, Roosevelt went to his fellow oligarchs and said, “Hand over some of your money or you will lose all your money in a revolution.” And they complied. That is how the government created fifteen million jobs, Social Security, unemployment benefits, and public works projects. The capitalists did not do this because the suffering of the masses moved them to pity. They did this because they were scared.
Which speaks to how FDR Democrats didn’t do enough to rein in the capitalists from having political power. To retain all the gains made by and for the working class one must have some sort of dictatorship of the proletariat.
Didn’t do enough? FDR literally boasted that he personally saved capitalism! He wasn’t trying to rein them in. He was protecting them! FDR’s administration created the concept of redlining at the federal level. Deliberate black poverty is part of his legacy.
Obviously my feedback is directed at those who genuinely believe FDR was a socialist, which he wasn’t.
Oh. Sorry!
No worries. It takes messaging discipline not to alienate normie socialists from the revolutionary cause. Simply saying FDR wasn’t a true socialist doesn’t convince anybody even if it’s demonstrably true.
You have to ease them into it.
Jonathan Coward
Every single time fascism has taken over, it is because the left was too busy infighting. Only a unified front can stop fascism. That means communists, socialists, anarchists, democratic socialists, liberals, pro- Israel centrists, anti-zionist leftists, everyone. None of your beef with each other matters if democracy disappears.
EDIT: Y’all have two choices - cooperate or welcome fascism. So far it looks like you prefer fascism
Then unify behind the left.
Everyone who is not fascist needs to unify.
“In order to stop fascism, leftists need to ally with genocidal fascists, otherwise it’s leftist infighting”
You lost me at cooporating with Zionists. They’re literally modern day Nazis and the cause of most of our biggest issues.
pro- Israel centrists
i.e. fascists
I’d rather saw my own head off than work with a Zionazi.
There are still Zionist centrists that want the Constitution preserved and for the US to be a democracy. In that they oppose the fascists the same as the left.
There can be no unity under capitalism
Every single time fascism has taken over, it is because the left was too busy infighting.
Every single time fascism has taken over, it is because liberals sided with fascists against socialists.
- Michael Burns (of Wisecrack fame): 📺 Why Liberals Always Side with Fascists
- Hampton Institute: Liberal Democracy: The Bedfellow of Fascism
- Gabriel Rockhill:
Once more let me remind you what fascism is. It need not wear a brown shirt or a green shirt – it may even wear a dress shirt. Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.
— Tommy Douglas
None of your beef with each other matters if democracy disappears.
What democracy? You have got to be kidding me. Previously:
It’s not wrong to say regulatory capture is a problem, it just doesn’t go far enough. The US government was never not captured by the bourgeoisie, because the US was born of a bourgeois revolution[1]. The wealthy, white, male, land-owning, largely slave-owning Founding Fathers constructed a bourgeois state with “checks and balances” against the “tyranny of the majority”. It was never meant to represent the majority—the working class—and it never has, despite eventually allowing women and non-whites (at least those not disenfranchised by the carceral system) to vote. BBC: [Princeton & Northwestern] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
The game is rigged. The election cycle’s pomp and circumstance is to divert your energy and attention from the fact that it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
Fascism and liberalism are the same fucking system. What you think of as the difference is actually the DISTANCE between you and the “frontier”. Inside the core of fascism is liberalism. On the boundary of liberalism is fascism.
What did liberal America do to black people? Fascism. What did liberal America do to indigenous people? Fascism.
What did liberal Europe do to Haiti? Fascism.
What did liberal Europe do to Africa? Fascism.
What did liberal Europe do to Southeast Asia. Fascism?
What did liberal America do to The Phillipines? Fascism.
Fascism is an inherently conservative ideology. It’s the basic definition, so you are simply wrong.
It’s the mix of total ignorance and complete smug confidence that makes you people so loathsome.
Pot meet kettle
Liberalism is inherently a conservative ideology. Liberalism doesn’t mean “not hating gay people”. The progressive and leftist movements within a dual capitalist two party system have worked within the Democratic party to achieve incremental improvements. It’s why you think “liberal” means “left leaning”. It does not.
The Republicans and Democrats are both “Liberals” and they are both currently supporting the rise of fascism in their own unique role.
Please go look up what the rest of the entire world means when they say “Liberal”. Then you might be capable of having the vocabulary to understand this conversation.
You don’t understand history then.
Conservatism was a specific response to liberalism. Liberalism said power comes from private property. Conservatism said power comes from the sovereign.
Fascism protects private property
Conservatism said power comes from the sovereign.
Fascism makes the dictator the sovereign.
Study history. Both Italy and Germany protected ownership rights and did not establish a return to an individual sovereign nor an aristocracy.
You are operating from vibes, not reality. Fascism as you know it has literally only ever emerged from a liberal democracy
Capitalism makes the rich the dictators, fascism just drops the facade
Liberalism is an inherently conservative ideology too.
Liberals are not left and most US democrats are liberals and not even social liberals,
which is the centrist position within capitalist democracy.They pervert the word.
I doubt the meaning of the word was deliberately and/or consciously changed.
I blame the US two-party system for this, which has a timeline where
the two political parties did not just shift, but switched places.The US democratic party has gone from being far-right,
to democratic socialist (left-wing), to center-right/right-wing and
currently going back to democratic socialist.It was deliberately perverted. The bourgeoisie own the government, the media, and the NGOs; and they know what they’re doing.
democrats are not the left.
A neoliberal corporate funded dark money group like “thirdway” fighting DSA is “infighting”?
My friend. At a certain point you gotta realize that these groups aren’t “fighting fascist”. They are literally there to exist as offering “the only reasonable defense against fascism” while spending all their time attacking to their left.
The are about as socialist as “national socialism”. Don’t pretend this is infighting. The left in America is United behind DSA. Even the twitter ultras are admitting that DSA is at least building class consciousness within the masses. Hell, the anarchist aren’t even crying that much and still doing good work on the streets as they always do. There is very little infighting. The Democratic establishment and groups like “thirdway” are not our allies. They will let Trump kill us all before they let capitalism lose ground.
If you’re defending these centrist Democrats and their propaganda groups like thirdway; you aren’t infighting with other leftist. You are supporting the fascism and falling for their “being reasonable” messaging. You are not “on the left” in any sense of the word. “Being reasonable” in the face of fascism literally just means allow it to keep its strength. You don’t stop fascism by being reasonable with the fascist.
lmao what on earth do you think unity among groups whose core positions are diametrically opposed looks like.
Usually in the US this logic is not about building an even slightly coherent coalition where there is something on the table for each group. Instead it is a nagging and attempt to shame people who are developing a political consciousness (not to mention conscience) into simply supporting the capitalist right wing status quo. Everyone with left principals has already correctly stepped away from that game entirely.
Let’s make it simple: what policy position are you giving to the Zionists and anti-Zionists, people whose sole descriptors are antithetical. Remember, the status quo state policies are Zionist, so doing nothing is not neutral.
what policy position are you giving to the Zionists and anti-Zionists, people whose sole descriptors are antithetical
Presumably these people have something else they care about in their life. Like preserving basic human rights and not getting put in a concentration camp.
Zionists very explicit don’t care about preserving basic human rights.
There are a lot of “zionists” who are brain washed and think that Israel is just defending itself (obviously I realize there is no such thing as defensive genocide). Nonetheless these people do believe in upholding the Constitution and democracy. They will fight the fascists and maybe in the process learn the error of their ways. We are already seeing this as support for Israel among Democrats continues to fall.
Okay so you can’t even see that Zionists are openly supporting and aiding in genocide. Because that sure as shit is not basic human rights, and the entire population is in a concentration camp at this point.
Purely terms of whether or not the United States falls to fascism, what happens in Israel is irrelevant.
So much for your “respect for basic human rights”
Pure selfishness disguised as a political position.
I’m not willing to give up human rights in the US because another country is committing genocide. Yes, we are giving some of the support that helps Israel to do it, but don’t think for a second that they wouldn’t be doing it even without US support. Two countries without human rights is not better than one country without human rights. Call it selfish all you want but idealism that does not adapt to reality helps no one.
As I said in the other comment, what you think of as a difference between fascism and not fascism is actually the DISTANCE between your position in the core of fascism and the boundary/periphery/frontier of fascism.
No, actually, Israel’s fate is directly tied to the US’s fate, and the US’s to Israel, because Israel is the 51st state.
Why do you think all the fascists love Israel and crack down on anyone who opposed its genocide?
It’s all one empire.
You are not on our side. You’re a scratched liberal who has already sided with the fascists.
If you don’t view genocide outside your borders as relevant you don’t deserve the dignity of human rights within your own.
The US doesn’t get to force fascism and imperialism on the rest of the world only for its citizens to live in peace.
Whatever happens, happens.
I guess I’m the first person to tell you what Zionism is? Because their whole thing is ethnic cleansing and concentration camps.
are you high?
EDIT: Y’all have two choices - cooperate or welcome fascism. So far it looks like you prefer fascism
You didn’t read a single one of the replies to your post.
Liberals are not leftists, centrists are fucking brain dead, pro Israel centrists even more so. What we have in this country is a gross perversion of democracy sold to us by corporations and paid off politicians.
Anyone who can’t recognize that and work with actual leftists to curb it, are actually the ones handing everything over to fascism. This status quo “most important election of our lifetimes” bullshit just keeps the pendulum swinging.
It’s exactly bourgeois, liberal democracy that legitimizes fascism in the first place. Its institutions rooted in private property relations and capitalist enterprise allow poverty to flourish thereby enabling fascists to pick up the pieces and divide us.
The rejection of fascism starts at recognizing capitalism and its internal contradictions as the driving force of fascism.
pro- Israel centrists
to fight fascism, we must unite with fascists
We must join with him, Gandalf. It would be wise, my friend.
But muh “divide & conquer…!”
