The "Alt-Left" Slur and right-wing talking points

Establishment Democrats and conservative Republicans have something in common: they both hate socialists above all else. Even more than fascists.

Establishment Democrats and conservative Republicans have one other thing in common: they both use the same talking points of the far-right to smear socialists.

slur.jpg

Let's start with the term "alt-left", a term President Trump used just today.
The video below goes into the origin of the term - how it started with the alt-right, went to Fox News, and ended with corporate Dems shamelessly punching left.

This isn't the only talking point of the far-right that corporate Dems have adopted.
Consider the smear by Third-Way Neera Tanden and her slur about the alt-left being fascists like the alt-right.
This has been a right-wing talking point for decades.

Democrats and democratic socialists were incorrectly linked by some to Nazism following the harrowing protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend that led to one woman’s death. The allegations were a huge misrepresentation of what each of the terms means and a poor, surface-only reading of what German leader Adolf Hitler’s party and government stood for.

The Newsweek article above was a defense of liberals against smears from the right-wing, but it applies just as well to smears from centrist, establishment Dems as well.

"Alt-left" is just the next step in the evolution of the "Bernie Bros" slur.
Or to put it another way, "We called you all racist, misogynistic, white men (even when you were people of color, women, or both) to get you to shut up about single-payer health care, and you still persisted. So now we are doubling down and calling you all Nazis."
Something tells me it isn't going to work.

Jacobin Magazine has a great article about how the horrible events in Charlottesville has exposed the corporate Dem to be shameless liars.

“If the Bernie Bros wanted to make a show of force on behalf of progressive values, Saturday in Charlottesville would be a good time,” wrote Mieke Eoyang, former Ted Kennedy staffer and vice president of the National Security Program at Third Way, a centrist think tank.

Corporate Dems actually dared Bernie supporters to turn out in Charlottesville, and they did.
Mieke has since deleted that tweet.

Well, the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville took place, and the same people who some have spent months dismissing as closet racists were on the front line, risking bodily harm to stand up against white supremacy. The International Socialist Organization (ISO) and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) were part of the counter-protest, and their flags flew high after the alt-right marchers had gone. The DSA started a fundraiser to cover the injuries sustained by those attacked at the event, which has raised $138,000 as of the time of writing. Two of its members were injured in the attack on the protests. So were the family members of a staffer at Truthout, a publication that was critical of Clinton during the 2016 election, and one of whose journalists has featured on the “Trumpian Leftism” Tumblr as a “Bernie Bro” and alt-left member.
Or let’s look at Heather Heyer, the murdered young woman who is so far the only casualty of Saturday’s right-wing attack. Heyer was a committed civil rights activist, whose mother, Susan Bro, said “always had a very strong sense of right and wrong.” She was also a Bernie Sanders supporter.
This is hardly a new development. DSA and other left-wing organizations have been involved in anti-Trump protests, including those against the implementation of Trump’s travel ban. Socialists have been playing important roles in recent protests against police violence. If you go further back, you can find leftists organizing and defeating racists in places like Dubuque, Iowa during the nineties and in other campaigns for over a century.

When push came to shove the socialists were on the front lines, risking their lives fighting the racists and Nazis, just like they have for a century.
Meanwhile, corporate Dems were nowhere to be found.

Sorry, that's not true.
Corporate Dems could be found shamelessly smearing socialists and trying to undermine their efforts at fighting Nazis.

Both of those tweets came out after people they call the alt-left got hurt or killed fighting Nazis.
Which just proves that people running the Daily Kos hate socialists more than Nazis.

This is far from the first time that the corporate Dems have ignored, undermined, and attacked the progressive left.
It's just the latest example.

Establishment Democrats’ tendency to punch left ignores that progressives, not moderate Democrats, are the ones who individually and collectively mobilize against fascism. Centrists have traditionally denigrated and attacked protesters—if not ignored them completely. From the Occupy Wall Street movement to the water protectors standing up to the Dakota Access pipeline, to the counter-protests against white supremacists, and the nurses and activists fighting for single-payer health care in California and across the country, the purveyors of the Bernie Bros and alt-left myth are nowhere to be found.
ShareBlue, a centrist outlet, did not run a single story on the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Neera Tanden, Markos Moulitsas, and DNC Chair Tom Perez never tweeted or otherwise mentioned the protests.

The question is, after more than a year of punching left, the corrupt corporate Dems have escalated their slurs to the point of saying progressives and socialists are no different from Nazis.
Where do you go after that?
What lies, what slanders do you have left after calling your "allies" Nazis?
And if that doesn't work, is the next step for corporate Dems simply to align themselves with Republicans?
We will find out.

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divineorder's picture

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

divineorder's picture

Too bad she didn't do this during the election, but still, I welcome it.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

@divineorder 'the time is always right to do the right thing’

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

@divineorder Sadly, that's all part of the shtick- advocate fiercely for a progressive issue when you have no path to bringing it to fruition. When the path does appear, then you have to switch to- well, this is the best we can do, it's a "starter house," the country's not ready for it. In some cases, they have to go so far as to create an impediment- like the NY Dems sending some of its members to caucus with the republicans to give them control of the senate and, whew!, a divided government. And you can forget Obama's sloppy resuscitation of the GOP after the economic collapse. Who knew one could resuscitate through the anus?

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Bollox Ref's picture

Hating socialists so much that attempting to work with and control Nazis seems a good game plan.

(Edited)

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

The Aspie Corner's picture

Right-wing enablers love to propagate the lie that the far-left and far-right have a lot in common and even help each other out because 'they both want to burn the system down'.

Fuck that. Even if the far-left wanted to burn it down, you can't blame them. After all, this is a system that goes out of its way to keep very few people very wealthy at everyone else's expense. Those at the top do all they can to keep that social order going, and if they manage to get a few plebs like skinheads, neo-nazis and the KKK to act as their shock troops, all the better. Especially when their centrist enablers want any peaceful left-wing movements punched down.

This capitalist empire needs to die a quick death. The sooner, the better.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

@The Aspie Corner

when it comes to how the money and power isn't working in this country. We each blame someone or something else for it, but we're pissed off over the same issues. Other things we will never agree on - not an inch. Those need to be put aside until we can wrest power from their cold hands.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Ravensword's picture

@dkmich @dkmich Then they take the power and persecute their former allies for the views and ideology they hold.

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gulfgal98's picture

@dkmich The majority of self described conservatives do not fall into the alt right category. These are the people we should be trying to reach and find common ground against the oligarchs. Events like those in Charlottesville are designed to keep us divided against one another so we cannot unite against our real oppressors.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

divineorder's picture

@gulfgal98 pulled back on the DLC . They badly needed a huge distraction .

Pass it on !

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Welcome to the new Mccarthy era

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He and the others are a bunch of damn limousine liberals rich-splaining why everyone should vote for crappy Dem candidates and against their own best interests. This is perfect.

"We called you all racist, misogynistic, white men (even when you were people of color, women, or both) to get you to shut up about single-payer health care, and you still persisted. So now we are doubling down and calling you all Nazis."
Something tells me it isn't going to work.

I think it is probable that Dems will quit being closet Republicans and join forces with the GOP officially. They are already coming together to protect corporate war and the deep state. Trump is living proof that sooner rather than later, the GOP has got to throw their crazies overboard. The Dems have already gotten rid of their base. How perfect a marriage can that be?

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

@dkmich They did in the county where I live. Every single Dem switched parties. The Dem party consists of some widows having pot luck lunches once in a while. Our former Democratic chair is Dale Everett. Haven't Googled him lately, but he was a DC lobbyist, had Hill and Bill on his speed dial. San Jacinto County resident, is a liason for veterans. He never served. oops. He is banned from the VFW or Legion Hall, do not know which, in Cleveland,Liberty County, TX.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@dkmich That happened a while ago. Certainly it had been done by the time Obama decided one of his priorities was to revive the GOP instead of sticking a stake through its heart. They were quite clear they were acting as one during the last election. The GOP and moneyed interests were firmly behind HER. Once it became too obvious, they had to go back to the feint of appearing to be in opposition. of course, some- like Lindsay- keep letting their hair down.

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thanatokephaloides's picture

And if that doesn't work, is the next step for corporate Dems simply to align themselves with Republicans?

They've already done that. By any reasonable standard (like "the political environment of any continuously-loyal State in the mid-1970s"), corporatist "Dems" are Republicans, and right-wing Republicans at that!

Don't forget that the standard-bearer here is Perpetual Goldwater Girl Hillary Clinton! Bad

And yes, we will indeed find out.....

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

WoodsDweller's picture

is the next step for corporate Dems simply to align themselves with Republicans?

If we have enough time left, this is exactly what I expect to happen.
The Tea Party / fascists / alt-right or whatever we're calling them this week are going to break away from the Republican party and form their own. If Trump is still around he will be their fearless leader and he will (of course) call it the Trump party. Their money will come from a handful of fascistic plutocrats.
The establishment Democrats and the establishment Republicans will unite. Call it the Washington Consensus, call it the Neoliberal/Neoconservative consensus, call it the DINO-RINO party, call it the Centrist party, whatever you like. Neither wing will have enough voters to hold power, but together they will have many voters and a tidal wave of corporate money.
I'm still looking for the New Socialist party to arise. The voters are there, the platform (basically Bernie's platform) is there, enough money can be raised through small donations to be viable.
And we'll have to learn to run the government in a three party system.

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

snoopydawg's picture

@WoodsDweller
I vote for The Harlem Generals.
The two parties have been playing the same game as the Washington Generals and the Harlem Globetrotters.
Same game, new name.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

of Thinkism.
How long before the Dem Establishment brings self-identified Dems to a pure 10%. So as to win elections.

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

chuckvw's picture

Markos, Armando, Deoliver, Bill, Hill, and Chelsea on the barricades bravely chanting, "We're with her", into the teeth of the Nazi storm...

By the way, this is how they will clear the field for their parachute candidates in 2018. It's an old trick, but seems to work pretty well.

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You should only listen to both sides when one side isn't totally full of shit. -Jim Jefferies

@chuckvw The disgusting aspect of comments by Tanden and Markos is how the pimp the bravery and courage of the people they despise.

What happened in Charlottesville contrasts with the democratic party activists have put their priorities such as marches demanding Trump's tax returns (instead of tax equity, etc.) and investigation into Russia. Chickenshit issues compared to everything that is going on with Trump.

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chuckvw's picture

@MrWebster Resist!™

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You should only listen to both sides when one side isn't totally full of shit. -Jim Jefferies

@MrWebster Actions, not words, show their priorities. Talk is way to cheap these days.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

Always so cocksure of his non-sequiturs:

The Alt Left, in their drive to smear the "impurity" of Clinton on economic justice issues, excused the racism and bigotry that is Trumpism.

How exactly does one smear impurity? Is he saying Hillary's impurity is a good thing and we smeared it by claiming she is indeed pure?

Or is her impurity a bad thing, and the smear is that we don't recognize her awesome purity.

I'm so confused.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

I am going to hang that on their necks on Twitter every chance I get. Limousine liberal comes right out of the right wing and rich-splaining is oh so dailykos.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Bollox Ref's picture

is an 'Alt-Left' site is hilarious.

People within the Orange Dead State bubble need to get out more.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

@Bollox Ref

lol

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ggersh's picture

in the meantime the centrist fuckers
like nazi's more than the socialist left.

http://www.ianwelsh.net/on-charlottesville-why-the-center-is-ok-with-naz...

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Wonder if he is still there. How these people can eat shit just to publish on a large blog even if it is full of @ssholes is beyond me.

On Charlottesville: Why the Center Is Okay with Nazis but Hates the Left
2017 AUGUST 13
by Ian Welsh

Look, the Charlottsville march of Nazis (they had the swastika and the salute, they’re not alt-right) showed very clearly the difference between how Nazis and left-wingers are treated. Left-wingers march, and the riot police are in their faces. Nazis march, and the police don’t even intervene while they are beating up counter-protestors.

Then, of course, we have the Nazi who drove his car into the crowd, and much of the media calling it a “clash with counteprotestors” (no) and saying things like “amid violence” rather than “in an act of terrorism.”

The center, which includes what is laughably called the “center left,” may condemn Nazis, but they certainly prefer them to left-wingers. They can do business with Nazis. The people they hate are those they call the “alt-left” in an attempt to pretend that wanting universal healthcare and cops to not kill blacks is the same thing as being a Nazi.

But the reason is simple enough: Centrists make a lot of money from prisons and for-profit healthcare.

The left–people who want single payer healthcare and less people in prison–are a direct threat to the center.vv[more]

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

snoopydawg's picture

@dkmich
But someone on DK wrote a diary about his tweet and called him out for it.
I'm sure you can imagine the shit storm that created.
So many people were defending him and their comments were ridiculous.
However, our little site got some exposure. A poster said that he checked us out (he made sure that it wasn't his idea to do it, someone suggested it to him) and he told everyone that we don't think that Russia interfered with the election. He just couldn't believe it Smile

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg That made me laugh and I'm still laughing cuz I can't believe there are people that still believe it.

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@snoopydawg on the subject now. Most of them in condemnation of the tweet with most of the comments calling to stop using the alt-left slur. I've been pleasantly surprised, particularly since I had this argument over there just last week, but was in the minority.

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Meteor Man's picture

@snoopydawg

I love it! Haven't done anything except quick drive-bys since THE NEPHEW pie fight. GOS and Markos are both stale shit sandwiches that have sat in the sun too long.

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

snoopydawg's picture

@dkmich

Nazis march, and the police don’t even intervene while they are beating up counter-protestors.

This shows that the Nazis and the police were in on this.

IMG_1174.PNG

The FBI warned people about this group in March and they also had spied on their websites and knew all about their agendas, yet they didn't bother to pull their permit.

As others have stated, TPTB want us fighting each other instead of focusing on what they are doing.
This sure knocked the Russian propaganda off of people's minds, and this too was planned.

Every time you see someone call the Nazis the alt right, correct them and tell them that they are Nazis.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@dkmich

Centrists make a lot of money from prisons and for-profit healthcare

This is the reason the Nazis and KKK are tolerated, which they are, and we are not. If anything, they keep the 99% fighting among themselves which does TPTB no harm at all and is beneficial really.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Mark from Queens's picture

@dkmich @dkmich
That's the cold, ugly truth about all of this:

Neoliberals are centrists.

It's all about the money. It's about their connections, their promised positions when they go round and round through the greased Revolving Door of DC, their summer homes, their toys, their status, the footsie games with Wall St, the private parties in the Hamptons, the helicopter commutes, their lavish lifestyles, the 5 start hotels $hillary insists on staying at, the quid pro quo manifesto of the Clinton Global Initiative, their stock portfolios and real estate holdings, and for the slavish sycophants of Kos's minions, a promise to scale the corporate ladder through various means of selling your soul.

It's easier more profitable to malign the true Left, the Socialists, the activists fighting for healthcare for all/free college education/tax the rich/end prison industrial complex and police brutality, etc.

Superpredators, the Crime Bill, Welfare Reform, the Telecommunications Act, The Commodity Futures Modernization Act - the face of fighting for the Poor, Minorities, the Middle Class, right?

Pose for a couple of public relations photos with very carefully selected identity signifiers, and drop a few milquetoast platitudes about them, but never really do anything about it. And if you finally do, only when it's been deemed safe for your career and the public has already been way in the majority with said issues, which is often decades after activists have given their sweat, blood and tears and died for causes.

Those willfully ignorant Neoliberals at TOP are the enemy in every way.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

@Mark from Queens

Pose for a couple of public relations photos with very carefully selected identity signifiers, and drop a few milquetoast platitudes about them, but never really do anything about it. And if you finally do, only when it's been deemed safe for your career and the public has already been way in the majority with said issues, which is often decades after activists have given their sweat, blood and tears and died for causes.

Hmmmmm?

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

detroitmechworks's picture

Throw up a scarecrow wearing a Nazi Armband...
Demand everyone agree that the Nazi Scarecrow represents anyone who doesn't agree with the PTB.
Relentlessly mock and demonize anyone who askes questions.

Of course, while that's going on, quietly continue the wars, continue to do nothing about health care, and push the Russia crap a bit more, but this time with the added bonus that anybody that doesn't believe you about the Russians is a NAZI! AAAAAND anybody who doesn't believe you about the Nazis is a Russian.

Ugh.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Mark from Queens's picture

their little sycophant minions splashing around in that pestilent Neoliberal cesspool.

They don't know a fucking thing about history - at all, or remain willfully ignorant.

That it was the Communists who stood arm in arm with Southern Blacks in the 1930's. That it was the Socialists that MLK, Bayard Rustin, and A Philip Randolph most identified with and were members of. That it was Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois who eviscerated the duopoly fraud of American capitalist government and its attendant racism, militarism and economic inequality. They're willfully ignorant on all this stuff. Try to remind them of any of this and more, which I did for a couple of years, and they go mum, or obfuscate, or claim some bogus superiority.

Of course they all turned on Cornel West too, once he had the temerity to see through and publicly call out the smokescreen of Obama's Neoliberalism.

West was in Charlottesville the night before the murder and part of a pretty daunting situation, in which the church they were in was surrounded by torch-carrying white supremacists. He said this on Democracy Now:

Over 20 of us who were standing, many of them clergy; we would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the Anarchists and Anti-fascists who approached over 300-350 Fascists. We just had 20. And we singing "This little light of mine...", if you know what I mean.

And it's crucial to say the Anarchists (and the Antifa), because they saved our lives. Actually, we would have been completely crushed. And I'll never forget that.

As he says, the woman who was murdered, Heather Heyer, was an organizer with the I.W.W. (and Bernie supporter, naturally).

Where is any of this context in the feckless media? Cowards, just like the fraudulent Neoliberals. It's all black and white to them. Propaganda thrives in such a fetid swamp such as that. It's all binary in their small worlds. While in the streets, in real life, it's always the other way. The 99% show up together, just as we did at Occupy, just as the BlackLivesMatter movement expressly didn't want to be labeled the "New Civil Rights" movement, but the "Oppressed People's Movement," to include LGBT, economic populism and the environment.

Here's the fucking bottom line, you coward motherfuckers at TOP - and yeah, I'm talking to you, you little, boot-licking, corporate-protectorate, $hillary zombie, lurker motherfuckers, directly now:

All you identity politics-driven, market-tested assholes, in your "safe spaces," with your pink pussy hats on like your Hollywood faux feminist heroes, none of you, have even a thumbnail of the courage that showed up and stood down these Fascists scumbags the way those beautiful, glorious, brave, strong BlackLivesMatter protesters, Democratic Socialists of America, IWW members, Anarchists, Bernie supporters, did in Charlottesville.

You, and your MSM lapdog cronies, fucking make me sick.

At the end of the day you're the incrementalist, apologists-for-your-corporate masters, platitude-filled, morally bankrupt, party Loyalists that Robeson, DuBois, Randolph, and Rustin spent their lives fighting against.

(Rant over...
Ah, that felt good too Smile )

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

@Mark from Queens And I will feel even better if I hear about even just one of those fucks you have so kindly mentioned reading it too.

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Meteor Man's picture

@Mark from Queens

Now take a few deep breaths, preferably mixed with Cali Kush. Breath in, breath out. Inhale like Barry, exhale like Clinton.

Much better, right?

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

@Meteor Man

with Democrats making sure no lover of MJ made it to bench of the Supreme Court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/06/us/high-court-nominee-admits-using-mar... (Ginsburg--Douglas)

Have I ever mentioned how hypocritical Democratic politicians are? And how they could give two craps about what is best for the vast majority of Americans?

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@Meteor Man

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snoopydawg's picture

of some type of the mainstream Democratic Party think tank and he was told to spread this alt left propaganda.
This also shows how the media and anyone who is able to reach large numbers of people are spreading propaganda. The fact that Hannity of all people also says this ties this all together.
We are still being played.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg David Brock. Bringing him into the party apparatus was the worst thing the Democratic Party did. He was a nasty, divisive person when he was a Republican and he's a nasty, divisive person as a Democrat.

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@Chaddiwicker @Chaddiwicker

the founding of Daily Kos. Same for Democratic Underground. Not necessarily Brock or a think tank, but in cahoots with something or someone Democratic to be the presence on the net for Democrats. When it was Democrats versus Bushco and Republicans, all was fine on the big boards. After Obama's election, it became liberals vs the center right, as well as Democrats versus Republicans. Then the authoritarianism came out.

Kos, like Hillary, was once a Republican and maybe CIA and worked in web development; the founder of the Democratic Underground did web development for centrist Democratic politicians and is married to someone who worked for Hillary. Might still work for her, but I don't know about that. Pathetic to think liberals were so grateful to one or the other or both during the Bush years.

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gulfgal98's picture

@HenryAWallace Once CIA, always CIA.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@Chaddiwicker or even repented for what he actually did. Sure, he felt really really sorry for dragging Anita Hill through the mud and for being mean to the Clintons too. So all he did was hitch his wagon to the Democrats and do for them what he did for the Republicans, albeit less effectively (at least assuming the real target was Republicans and not progressives.)

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

gulfgal98's picture

@snoopydawg He spews whatever is the propaganda/talking points from DNC central and posts them on dkos with a healthy dash of four letter words. Markos is not a deep thinker and never has been.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@gulfgal98

what Tom Sawyer is to fence painting.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

dervish's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger Congrats!

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

Markos has spend the entire summer with his family vacationing in Germany.And this little prick has the GALL to call white working class folk who have lost their jobs,homes,healthcare "PRIVILEGED".This miserable excuse for a walking pile of shit has alot more in common with a wealthy member of the GOP than a working class Democrat.This example of what the new corp Democratic party has become shows exactly why the Dims keep losing working class voters and elections.
His latest tweet is WAY TOO PREDICTABLE!His propaganda web page is starving for 'CLICKS'He has learned over time how to make a statement that inflames and draws people in to his shit site via 'CLICKBAITING'FUCK MARKOS!DONT FEED THE BEAST!

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DW

Cassiodorus's picture

@LEFTYFRIZZLE @LEFTYFRIZZLE don't really care if their party keeps losing seats. They went from the 111th Congress to the current reality. This is their preferred outcome.

When the Republican Party controls every legislative seat in America outside of California, these people will retire handsomely on their corporate subsidies and congratulate themselves on a job well done. Bollox Ref (above) is correct. They're the von Papens of the world. BONUS OUTCOME: climate change will be a lot more "noticeable" by then.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

uglier than the right when hunting impurities. Hell, the liars shamelessly make up impurities, then pound on them self-righteously.

That the left demands purity is nonsense. Since this country began, the left of the left has helped elect politician after politician, getting little of what it would like and much of what it disliked. And by "helped elect, I don't mean just showing up at the polls. I mean donating, volunteering, bundling, etc.

The left of the left endured slavery, wars, Jim Crow, McCarthyism, etc. The left has always been the segment of U.S. society that most had to compromise its ideals, while the right was stubbornly unyielding--unless they felt physically threatened, as was the case prior to the New Deal and prior to the Great Society. Post Patriot Act, they have few reasons to feel physically threatened.

And what was the left's sinful wish anyway? Wanting equal rights for all people, an end to wars, a living wage and maybe at least a barely survival-level subsistence for Americans without jobs? Isn't that the kind of thing lying, hypocritical establishment Democrats ran on for decades, until alt Clinton showed up promising to end welfare? Was that a left position, a centrist position or a Pete Peterson position?

And, what is the alt right anyway, but the same people who we used to call the extreme right? I can play alt center right vocabulary games, too. Al From claimed that he had named the Progressive Policy Institute as he did because he got tired of reading that the Democratic Leadership Council was conservative. He figured people could not write about "the conservative Progressive Policy Institute."

Well, guess what? From was as wrong about that as he is about everything else, People can. The only fundamental difference between the conservative Progressive Policy Institute and the conservative DLC is the artifice and hypocrisy in naming the former. So, if we are changing vocabulary, why the eff are we leaving out the alt center right? The alt centrists? The ultra pure centrists? The alt hypocrites?

Stop letting them draw the boundaries of the fields of battle and making sure we stay in the lines they drew, as we fight back at their lying, anti-left propaganda. Screw their lies, their hypocrisy, their calculated self-righteous shaming and their putrid purity tests. Their sainted candidate for President:

Led Confederacy Month celebrations,

Joked about Gandi working in a US gas station

Affected a Southern drawl while speaking to black people in Harlem

Compared serving as a U.S. Senator to working on a plantation

Promoted for profit prisons,

Talked about "super thugs" and "hard working white people,

Ran one dog whistle racist Presidential primary campaign and one dog whistle anti-Semitic Presidential primary campaign while playing every victim card in the deck, including the race card--no small feat for a WASP

Laughed at attempting to make a teen rape victim of a forty year old man seem like the villain in court

Offered up Roe v. Wade to a Constitutional amendment.

Shamed the women her husband hit on while standing by her man,

Argued against equal marriage on the floor of the US Senate

In 2008, called DADT and DOMA having done "very well" by gays

Is a warmonger who voted for every war and surge she could and laughed on camera at the murder of Gaddafi and at the prospect of bombing Iran

Amorally did all the above and more--anything to advance herself.

Purity, my ass, alt PUMA hypocrites.

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Big Al's picture

@HenryAWallace there's a large percentage of "other" people who can't really identify with any of this, but when it comes to what they believe in and want for this country and humanity, they would be classified as the left. It's just that they don't identify with the democratic party and their inter-skirmish's related to Hillary and Bernie and the corporate wing vs the progressive wing. I mentioned earlier how the twenty percenters are controlling the narrative, basically the partisans of the two duopoly parties. That's what is happening now, it's all framed within the duopoly political system. People like Marcos aren't railing on the indies, he's railing on the Bernie supporters, the Hillary haters, those now called the "alt-left". It's all part of the illusion that is our supposed democracy. There is a large segment of society, sixty percent or more, to be tapped into to oppose the oligarchy without having to expend this much energy and focus on fringe groups.

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Big Al's picture

@Big Al @Big Al But good comment. Smile

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@Big Al https://www.democraticunderground.com/12777036 (Thread titled
Let's talk polls.")

The thread, while illustrative, was posted in 2015 and therefore could use updating. For example, Robyn posted here not long ago about polls about transgender issues that show most Americans don't hate them or object to sharing a john with them.

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Big Al's picture

@HenryAWallace filled with propaganda for war making. That's why they create these divisions and labels, to keep the mass majority of people who simply want what's fucking right from getting together and demanding it. Those caught up in this alt left, alt right bullshit are wasting their time.

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@Big Al

The 99% (or 90%, whatever) just didn't wake up to that reality until recently. The others always knew it. They always knew, too, that they could be in danger from within as well as from without, which probably explains every oppressive, repressive government ever.

The Constitution originally gave the vote only to white males who owned property and could afford to pay a poll tax--about 6% of the population at the time. In the 1800s, the police brutalized union activists on behalf of John D. Rockefeller (whose testamentary trust paid no taxes). During the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, many insiders told anecdotes. One of them was that JFK had people standing by to cut the mikes and play the records of Mahalia Jackson (who was sitting on the stage) if the speeches seemed out of line.

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@HenryAWallace

It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about H.I.V./AIDS back in the 1980s. And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan – in particular, Mrs. Reagan – we started a national conversation, when before nobody would talk about it. Nobody wanted anything to do with it.

This is what gets me about Her, just because she's not goosestepping or blatantly supporting Nazis, doesn't mean she's some civil rights leader. Her record with women, minorities, LGBT isn't that fantastic, especially if you factor in worldwide conditions. They want to label "BernieBros" purists for daring to point out that Sanders was physically on the front line of Civil Rights while Her was a Goldwater Girl. And it's not like that's all in the past. The tonedeaf praise for the Reagans was just last year.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Creosote.'s picture

@Dr. John Carpenter
by Dallasdoc, written at about the time he began posting more here:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/12/1500175/-The-Wound-Has-Been-R...

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with TOP for good over this alt-left bullshit.

All I've really done there for the past couple of weeks is recommended TomP diaries and post comment after comment after comment trying to explain that I'm not a Nazi and why anyone using the term alt-left is a Nazi enabler doing Steve Bannon's work.

It's no use. All I get is centristsplaining about how I really am a Nazi but just haven't come to grips with the Naziism inherent in my support for single payer health care and free college. Nazi privilege you know. Fuck those people. Fuck them all.

When a community you think you're a part of reduces you to explaining that you're not a Nazi it might be time to face the fact that you just don't belong in that community anymore, that's what I always say.

I stayed around to try and push back since the site showed its ass last March, but all I've really been doing is donating clicks to Markos' Tesla Liberal cause. No more.

Word is there's another purge coming and I have a feeling I'll be included. I'll never know for sure because I'll never visit that website again.

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@Dopeman

We'll leave the light on (-:

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gulfgal98's picture

@HenryAWallace here at Caucus99% for people of good will who want a better world for everyone.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@Dopeman

They don't care who you are or how long you've been there. If you don't agree with the latest paid talking points, you're shit to them. I followed Dean there. I considered myself a big part of that website over my ten years there. After Bubba took dailykos to lunch in Harlem, I couldn't recognize the joint. It went down hill from there. Being the addict I was, it took me a long time to leave. I came with the group that started c99, and I haven't looked back since. Deleted my emails and most of my diaries. I don't want Kos or his trolls touching me or my stuff.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Cassiodorus's picture

@dkmich At some point, however (I think it was 3/1/2016), Markos declared that only "constructive criticism" of Hillary Clinton would be allowed on his site. And since there's no such thing as "constructive criticism" of Hillary Clinton, the predictable outcome was that Orange would become RedState with a (D), which is what it became.

There's a distinction to be made between deluded fools and open enemies. Before 3/1/2016, Markos fit into the former category. Afterward...

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

@Cassiodorus

And since there's no such thing as "constructive criticism" of Hillary Clinton

So true. My favorite part is how the rule against conspiracy theory was twisted and abused regarding the fairness/integrity of the 2016 primary.

Any suggestion that the 2016 primary was anything other than an equal, unbiased paragon of electoral integrity that Hillary won fair and square because Bernie sucks is called out as CT and flagged. What a joke.

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Cassiodorus's picture

@Dopeman perhaps irrevocably, by refusing to challenge results or demand investigations.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

@Cassiodorus I know a lot of people feel that way. I don't.

My guess is that he saw what he was up against and winning that fight was not one of the possible outcomes.

I think if he would have fought it, protested the result, launched a third party run, etc., it would not have worked. Hillary would have still been the Dem nominee and she would have still lost to Trump. The only difference would be that Bernie would have got even more blame for it than he does now.

He would have made himself a pariah in the Senate, an outcast, and would not hold the leadership positions (Outreach + ranking Finance committee member) that he does now.

In my opinion he made the best he could out of an impossible situation. There was no way for him to win. I tjink he took the best option available to him: to maintain/increase his standing in the Senate and push his agenda from there.

Once the fix was in and the rigged primary completed it was over. There was no viable path for him to get from there to the presidency.

If I can't have him as my president like I wanted, the best I can hope is that he has as much inluence from his Senate seat as possible. I believe that's the calculation he made and I believe he didn't make it for himself, he made it for me.

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Cassiodorus's picture

@Dopeman

it would not have worked

1) President Trump.
2) Democrats out of office practically everywhere.
3) Big credibility problem for "Our Revolution" -- why bother to challenge the system if you're not going to challenge election fraud?

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

@Cassiodorus I think #1 would have happened anyway (but if it happened with Bernie running 3rd party he'd go down in history as the reason). Same goes for #2.

As to your 3rd point what credibility would have been gained by blowing up his own career and losing anyway?

I think the difference between your opinion and mine is what we think the outcome of him running as an independent would have been. I think he would have lost. Badly. We'll never know what might have happened but my guess is he would have just split the Dem vote and Trump would have beat Hillary by an even larger margin than he did.

All the Hilbots screeching about Russia now would be screeching about how Bernie is nothing but another Ralph Nader who handed the White House to a Republican.

To be clear, I don't blame 2000 on Nader and I wouldn't join those who blamed Bernie for 2016. I'm not talking about what I think I'm talking about Democratic party groupthink and what filters down to the low information voters who really decide our elections. They would all blame Bernie for 2016 just like they blame Nader for 2000.

It's not much, but what we got out of this (which I think was the only thing salvagable) is a higher profile Bernie Sanders in the Senate, with more power to push his agenda and spread his message.

I don't think 2016 was the end. In the big picture I think Bernie's rise was Act 2. Act 1 was the Occupy movement. Occupy rose up and got stamped out. Then Bernie rose up and was cheated. It will rise again.

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Wink's picture

@Dopeman
here believe Bernie should have just said "Fuck y'all" and run as an independent (or some such), but as long as Hillary was running - and everyone knows damn well she was running regrdless of circumstances as the heir apparent - there was No Way Bernie was going to win in a 3-way any more than Ralph did.
As far as challenging the Primary results... challenge what? There are MANY that say the DNC rigged it - and I agree - but how does Bernie prove it? Impossible. And, again, he just emerges as the whiny pants liberal, the MSM eating him alive.
Fact is, Bernie had zero choices to make and still stay alive in 2017 and beyond. So, he sucked it up, "supported" Hillary and carried the DNC torch. It had to be hell, still has to be hell, but he remains America's most popular politician.
That wouldn't have happened had he chosen to "go rogue," flip off DWS and her party and taken on the Trumpster. And, yes, we lost an oopportunity. Big time. But, we can blame DWS and her DNC for that, not Bernie.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Cassiodorus's picture

@Dopeman Please explain how Sanders "blows up his career" by creating a party. He's at about retirement age anyway, and the nice folks who maintain the existing parties are slowly but surely blowing up the whole planet.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Wink's picture

@Dopeman
"My guess is that he saw what he was up against and winning that fight was not one of the possible outcomes."
"In my opinion he made the best he could out of an impossible situation. There was no way for him to win. I tjink he took the best option available to him: to maintain/increase his standing in the Senate and push his agenda from there.

Once the fix was in and the rigged primary completed it was over. There was no viable path for him to get from there to the presidency."

Couldn't agree more and have said so here often.
Could Bernie have said "Fuck it," flipped off the DNC and the Dem party and started something new with the tens of thousands of followers he had?
Yes. Well, maybe.
That he chose the direction he chose... well, I suspect he had good reasons, none of them having to do with "too chicken to challenge the Primary results and go it on his own."
Bernie is still in it, still a player, albeit a weakened one, becuz he chose the path he chose. A smart move in my opinion. Had he "gone rogue" he would have been squashed like a bug, no way for him to be looked at other than as a whiney pants librul too taken by himself to do the right thing and support the nominee.
His ultimate choice certinly wasn't what we wanted, we supporters left holding our ass while Bernie tucked tail and sucked up to "The Establishment" DNC. The "optics" were ugly at best. But, he lived to fight another day, has lost some - but not all - of the support he had 14, 15 months ago, and now is regarded as the Dem party's most popular politician. Hillary? Meanwhile, Hillary already headed to the dustbin of history. The question still remains, what does Bernie do with what's left of his cred, his bonafides? But there's no question that he still has some.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

@dkmich I tried to delete diaries too but then I signed off and searched for them and found them still there.

Most of them are very old and outdated anyway so I guess I don't really care. It's just a little creepy and fascist. I always thought the policy about never deleting accounts was creepy and fascist too - ErrinF was right.

"I decided I don't like your website and I want to delete myself from it."

"No way, we're keeping everything you wrote here forever and there's nothing you can do about it bwahahaha!"

IMO that is and always has been Markos breaking his own DBAD rule.

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gulfgal98's picture

@Dopeman from dkos for deleting his own diaries.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@gulfgal98 Wow. Sounds like little Markos has control issues.

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Wink's picture

@Dopeman
here! Small p. I couldn't take the anti-Bernie crap from kos over there about his Ides of March horse$h!t, made a comment that Hillary's granny panties must be frosted (or some such) and got bojo'd soon thereafter. I'm hoping others there take your lead and follow you here. This place needs to grow with more folks like yourself.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

@Wink lol yeah, I avoided making comments like that once the purges started because I wanted to stay around and be able to push back.

I always tiptoed along the line and got flagged/timed out a few times, but never bojo'd.

It's nice to be able to openly say I hope Markos chokes on Hillary's granny panties and not worry about getting banned for it.

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Meteor Man's picture

Ask anyone to name Hillary's top five achievements in her entire political career. She is accomplished at getting "positions" and PR. That's it!

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Cassiodorus's picture

@Meteor Man They're all in line with her right-wing Methodist worldview. The Crime Bill, the Welfare Bill, all the disasters she incited when she was at State, and she's a significant architect of the TPP, so when that passes...

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

dervish's picture

The question is, after more than a year of punching left, the corrupt corporate Dems have escalated their slurs to the point of saying progressives and socialists are no different from Nazis.
Where do you go after that?

In an argument, the first one to trot out the Nazi reference loses, so the centrists lose this round.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

@dervish

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1."[2][3]‍—‌that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or his deeds.

Besides I repealed Godwin's law. (-:

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... tried for a long time to offer sensible alternatives to the centrist views. With that tweet from Markos I made myself an account here. I don't know how well this place lines up with my views. I held my nose for Hilary in the general and I'd do it again because what I wanted to see was Trump lose so badly that all the racists who came out for him would see how small they actually were. I guess they showed me.

Anyway, I'll probably hit both sites for a while and see which one sticks.

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"...they are not just groups of donors anymore. They are often the kinds of donors that are called super-pacs. No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heel."

@NoOneOfConsequence hi, I sort of hope our views do not align, because that is boring and goes nowhere fast. C99 is supposed to be non-partisan, but we are the 99% so anything goes right? Here is the last update to "our demands": https://caucus99percent.com/content/demands-second-pass
Love joe shikspack, thanks!
Here is his original essay RFC, request for comments: https://caucus99percent.com/content/what-are-your-demands

Comments here never expire, as far as I can tell. There is no "end" to conversations, everything can be edited, it is up to author if they did care to take note.

peace

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@eyo I consider myself to be left of Bernie Sanders and the first thing I discovered at c99 is that there are people to my left here. I love it. It's so nice to be the pragmatic centrist for once!

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@NoOneOfConsequence
Nor do we want one.
There is also no party loyalty here.

The only rule that is enforced is DBAD.

There is a whole lot less traffic here, but its balanced out by the lack of trolls and injustice collectors.

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divineorder's picture

@NoOneOfConsequence @gjohnsit 'holding my nose while voting.' I voted for the only peace candidate who was also working for universal health care, was a woman, and a doctor. Jill Stein. Voted for Bernie in the primary, but then voted for Jill Stein against HRC. There are others here who did the same. Others who did not.

Full disclosure, I still go to Dkos on occasion to read Meteor-Blades work.

Welcome.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

@NoOneOfConsequence

I held my nose for Hilary in the general and I'd do it again

I didn't vote for her but that's only because I live in California. My blue state privilege allowed me a protest vote for the green party. If I lived in a swing state I would have held my nose and voted for the lesser evil.

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gulfgal98's picture

@NoOneOfConsequence You can edit your comments here. Also we have a thumbs up button to allow people to give the comment writer positive feed back. We do not list who gave the thumbs up. Also, we do not have a thumbs down button. The reason for both of these things is that it prevents roving gang atmosphere that permeated the other place and makes the thumbs up button much more meaningful when it is given anonymously.

We encourage interaction even when you do not agree, but we expect disagreements to be respectful and based upon facts and or policy. We also encourage folks to write on whatever topics they wish to do so. Most of us would like to see more essays (we call them essays) on science, environment, and sustainability. So if you have an interest in one of those areas, please consider writing an essay.

Jump in and feel free to participate.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

gulfgal98's picture

Mitt Romney tweeted, but he actually is to the left of many corporatist progressives on the events in Charlottesville.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

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