this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31730469

To redirect revolutionary energy from destroying to the system to just criticizing Trump. It is a way for them to gain popular support and show themselves as anti-establishment instead of the bourgeoisie that they are who need to be overthrown

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[–] MayoPete@hexbear.net 15 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

The libs going to these protests aren't joining the left anytime soon.

They're most likely a scratch away from going full fascist vs. comrades in waiting. Think about it: these protests are on a weekend midday attended by a whole lot of well-off-enough white people with their "brunch" signs and costumes. This is a performance that they can say they did to their coworkers in their comfy office jobs on Monday.

You know who wasn't there? All the service workers who had to work during the weekend. All the people working 2+ jobs to survive. People without childcare. Neurodiverse people who get overloaded by the sensory input. People experiencing homelessness. Those people are potential comrades because they are the ones most exploited by Capital right now. The people serving brunch to these libs are the people to talk to, start slipping flyers, having those 1:1 organizing conversations with.

[–] neomachino@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 17 hours ago

I'm a neurodivergent who was working from home and taking care of my 2 kids while my wife was working an extra shift. I would've slipped out for a bit and brought the kids if the air wasn't litterally toxic yesterday where I am due to an ongoing forest fire burning down one of my favorite local state parks.

[–] Tachanka@hexbear.net 77 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

2025 No Kings solidarity 2010 Tea Party

Astroturfed by billionaires blue-check

Packed with boomers blue-check
Larping as 1776 colonial minutemen blue-check

Does not fundamentally challenge capitalism blue-check

Obsessed with opposing the current president only blue-check

2025 libs are literally just 2010 tea party people now. Embarrassing. in 6 years they'll be 2016 Trump republicans.

[–] porcupine@lemmygrad.ml 43 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Honestly pretty optimistic of you to say these dipshits are on a trajectory that will lead to them storming the white house in 11 years.

[–] buh@hexbear.net 21 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

They would never, it has no brunch cafes

[–] HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 20 hours ago

They'd be armed with Salad Shooters and bear-spray canisters loaded with mimosas.

[–] propter_hog@hexbear.net 19 points 22 hours ago

But it would be funny

[–] Robert_Kennedy_Jr@hexbear.net 59 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Walmart was also one of the sponsors of the military parade both-sides

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 16 hours ago

iplaybothsides.tar

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 41 points 1 day ago (1 children)

As I have said before, the service and finance sector are growing worried by the incoherence and audacious nature of the military industrial complex. We will see much more of this in the future as the waning geopolitical might of the U.S. is eroded.

[–] SevenSkalls@hexbear.net 13 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Capitalist in-fightings is an opportunity for us!

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 8 points 21 hours ago

That remains to be seen. I personally think one side or the other must win out, and that will be when the opportunity presents itself, because they both need to exist for the empire to continue running. If one side wins, it will destabilize the entire project, and that is where opportunity lies.

It's not the in-fighting that benefits us, it is the assumed total victory against their greatest challenger that will leave them open.

[–] Z_Poster365@hexbear.net 20 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I hate to break it to you all but PSL and Young Communists league both participated and co-sponsored the event

[–] propter_hog@hexbear.net 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Kind of says a lot about those orgs if they are on the same side as a billionaire

[–] Z_Poster365@hexbear.net 36 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

To be fair, like thousands of orgs participated and co-sponsored it including multiple socialist, trade unionist and progressive groups. It was extremely big tent, so big tent that it's basically meaningless

[–] SevenSkalls@hexbear.net 36 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I'm sure they all had their own agendas. The Waltons would want a President who doesn't tariff everything. The PSL and similar orgs used the opportunity to find dissent to recruit.

[–] Rom@hexbear.net 32 points 21 hours ago

Yeah it's a good opportunity for agitation and recruitment, not surprised to hear the PSL was there.

[–] propter_hog@hexbear.net 6 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Well, that's fair. I didn't realize it was that big.

[–] Z_Poster365@hexbear.net 5 points 19 hours ago

Sounds like 3-4 million people showed up. Pretty damn big

[–] Dessa@hexbear.net 26 points 23 hours ago (1 children)
[–] propter_hog@hexbear.net 7 points 22 hours ago

Fuck me, I was convinced it was a shop

[–] frogbellyratbone_@hexbear.net 22 points 23 hours ago

where do i get my Walton check for protesting?

[–] FourteenEyes@hexbear.net 9 points 20 hours ago

What "revolutionary energy"

[–] xj9@hexbear.net 11 points 22 hours ago (7 children)

Do we think its possible to counter-coopt these events? Yah or Nah?

[–] jack@hexbear.net 1 points 1 hour ago

Yes, it happens all the time.

[–] SevenSkalls@hexbear.net 21 points 21 hours ago

I saw PSL recruiting at my local event, but they didn't really try to coopt the thing as a whole. Basically, they seemed to talk, kept their speeches mostly to stuff everyone agreed about (Wallstreet and Trump is bad), inserted some anti-imperialist talking points, and then used that to find receptive people, and sign them up or hand them flyers.

So, they were selective about it, but it doesn't mean the protests weren't useful to them. It's a chance to grow the movement and get people who wouldn't have otherwise heard of them. I'm sure other communist movements did a similar thing.

[–] Z_Poster365@hexbear.net 17 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Co-opt the events themselves? Unlikely. Recruit from them and agitate within those spaces? Possible, but I'm not gonna do it cause I can't stand libs and would just end up yelling at them

[–] calidris@hexbear.net 5 points 18 hours ago

This is the way. Had and HVAC tech come up to a protest I was at that was mostly just anti-Trump/republican policy. When others told him that, he mentioned how local businesses and properties are getting gobbled up by private equity and that there's more going on behind the scenes. There are workers waking up with no direction to aim their frustration. Get out there and show them the way comrades.

[–] HamManBad@hexbear.net 16 points 22 hours ago

You go and talk to people to find people who might join your org, make connections between orgs, etc. But on the whole, these protests are absolutely not productive

[–] OldSoulHippie@hexbear.net 14 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Probably not. Your average Westerner is incapable of changing their minds via someone presenting evidence or a well thought out argument. They have to come across it organically and it has to be their idea. It looks weak if you change your opinion in the face of new evidence, so it has to be something they bump into on their own, like when your aunt "discovers" this hip new restaurant called chilis

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 19 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

A good rule of thumb is to assume that your average American is Mac from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, in that the fact that science makes you look like a bitch sometimes is evidence that it doesn't actually know things. Or they are Dennis in that they assume that the science is right because that makes them feel superior to others, not because they are actually interested in the truth-value, or why and how we understand the science.

[–] OldSoulHippie@hexbear.net 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Pretty accurate. I've known both types of people. I just found out my best friend from childhood is posting screeds of blueanon type shit on Facebook. Like I wouldn't be surprised if he gets a visit from the feds for fedposting. When we were kids, he was too smart for his own good, but swallowed state department talking points hook, line and sinker. It was kind of weird when we were teenagers and I got totally radicalized. We had the same upbringing and he got a totally different message from it. He's definitely the Dennis type where his "knowledge" was his weapon and his entire goal was to steamroll your argument and "shut you down". If he couldn't "shut you down" he would "write you off".

There's a reason we aren't really friends anymore. it was weird seeing him be so rabid when above all, he always valued a civil tone and a level head.

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 7 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah I had many similar experiences when some o my acquaintances in high school started an 'atheist club' and asked me to join because I was one of the more vocal non-believers in school (in that I would actively discuss and push back against faith-based narratives in class, but just within what was being discussed) but was still friendly with the more liberal evangelicals. I think I attended two meetings before I realized that most of them were just "Science as the superior faith" people and not really all that interested in the philosophy of knowledge or how to know things. It was a really eye opening moment for me that there needs to be more to this whole skeptic thing than just contrarianism, and felt that it was doomed to online obscurity.

I don't think much has changed, if anything there are more conservative Dennis's than there ever were before.

[–] OldSoulHippie@hexbear.net 3 points 20 hours ago

I feel like a lot of us calibrated on the atheism scale. I was an out loud atheist when I was a teenager too, but I realized after a year or so that it's not cool to go out and pick fights. I feel like it was part of my over all radicalization in the way that I learned that just because you're right, doesn't mean you get to be a dick about it.

Liberals have a hard time dealing with that reality and won't even think about how their messaging hurts them. Not that the message is any good in the first place...

[–] MayoPete@hexbear.net 3 points 18 hours ago

Honey-Chipotle Chicken Crisp the CEOs

[–] roux@hexbear.net 6 points 19 hours ago

Our local group of anarchist and Marxist hooligans are in early talks on how to start educating and radicalizing the group of radlibs that we were helping run cop watch, scanner duties, and jail support for. There is a lot of confused and scared libs that the little optimist in me thinks we can work with and help them start to understand things from an actual leftist perspective. If we can see even a few new comrades come out of this with the smaller turnout we had at the protest, I think it will be worth it. We won't counter-coopt the org, but I think it's a good place to develop networks and go from there.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 12 points 22 hours ago

its a good opportunity and socialists should always be prepared for it.

but it might take a bit of failure on their part first.

[–] aileks@hexbear.net 5 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

To be completely fair, it's not Walmart the corporation. That framing is a bit disingenuous.

[–] Dirt_Possum@hexbear.net 9 points 18 hours ago

How is that being "fair" or the original framing "disingenuous"? She's the Walmart heiress! So what if it wasn't the actual direct corporate funds that the money was shelled out from, it was still a top member of the Walton Family who owns the corporation. No one is saying "Ew look, Walmart funded this" we're saying "Ew look, some of the filthiest and most notorious of the bourgeoisie funded this."

Walmart heiress Christy Walton promoted a planned nationwide protest against President Trump by placing a full-page advertisement that ran in the New York Times on Sunday. The ad, which the billionaire heiress paid for, calls on people to participate in the "No Kings" protest.

Pretending that because the Walmart board of trustees weren't directly the ones funding it, this criticism is some kind of misdirection, that is what's disingenuous.

distinction without a difference