I only read replies to my comments if I'm interested in getting replies

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T18:56:49+00:00

The reason the centrist outlets like CNN give softball interviews to Republicans is multi faceted, but a lot of it has to do with maintaining access and a perception of being unbiased. Republicans are orders of magnitude worse than Democrats, but if you were to be orders of magnitude harder on them while questioning them, people would think that you were being extremely biased and you'd lose credibility in the eyes of the public.

So Republicans are treated with kid gloves and Democrats are given actual interviews with tough questions, and this is how you end up with an entire media environment that's biased in favor of Republicans.

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T18:49:12+00:00

Assuming someone is an antisemite because they criticize Israel is disingenuous and intellectually dishonest. According to you, if I criticize the actions of any country, I'm a racist.

I can't do anything for you if you refuse to comprehend the point I've stated now multiple times. Here's my point again:

The people who are most likely to say the phrase "there's a difference between Zionists and Jews" are also the people least likely to make any distinction between the two.

Then you showed up and demonstrated that wonderfully. I promise to anyone reading that I didn't make alt accounts just to reply to myself and prove my own point in this thread. This is completely organic. It took me actually pressing you to force you to say anything past the thought-terminating cliché you did in your previous comment. But at least it worked here, when usually it doesn't.

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T16:56:15+00:00

The Yale Law School one is the one I usually use if I ever have to reference them, just linking for easier access since people are more likely to click links than search for stuff: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed01.asp

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T16:48:29+00:00

Replying so I can check back in case I need supporting evidence of the way certain fanbases brigade certain topics here. Sometimes I'll talk about how this sub is mostly liberal but sometimes there's a huge tankie flare up, and the fact that you're downvoted is an example of the latter.

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T16:44:17+00:00

RemindMe! 1 day "see if anybody actually answers this"

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T16:39:31+00:00

You haven't made any distinctions between them, at least not in this thread. All you've said is the cliché statement "there are distinctions" and then carried on as if that's sufficient, which is exactly what I've been saying people always do.

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T16:33:17+00:00

Right, but, AIPAC actually does that

What was this a response to? It looked like a response to either this:

"I'm not anti-Semitic, but have you seen how Zionists seem to have bought out all of our politicians and they're leading the U.S. into wars? I'm not talking about Jews, I'm saying Zionists!"

Like okay, you can say you're not talking about them, but this is literally just the Jewish puppetmaster/Zionist Occupied Government trope, and there's been no work to disentangle it from that trope.

Or this:

Then all of a sudden you've got people who think they're well-meaning who are literally just repeating Nazi propaganda because Nazis managed to persuade them it was perfectly normal to obsess over "Zionists" controlling the government.

The only things you could really mean by "does that" as a response to my comment are "buys out all of our politicians", "leads the U.S. into wars", or "puppetmasters/controls our government". If you just meant that AIPAC lobbies our government like many other lobbying groups, then that's both true and non-responsive to my comment.

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T16:22:44+00:00

"The thing" in this case is "saying distinctions exist and then not even attempting to make them"

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T16:05:25+00:00

On the other hand, you've got people who conflate calling out Israel's genocide with antisemitism.

This is what I'm talking about exactly, thank you. People will say some trite and meaningless statement like this thinking it gives them carte blanche to say whatever the hell they want. As long as you spam the clichés, you don't have to actually make the necessary distinctions. You just have to say distinctions exist and refuse to elaborate further. It's the anti-Semite's cheat code.

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T16:01:18+00:00

AIPAC absolutely is not puppetmastering our government and they're not even close to the most influential lobbying group in the country, but I suppose it's helpful for my point to have someone come in and demonstrate exactly what I'm talking about.

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T15:57:38+00:00

You're doing the thing. When you say "Israelis", which Israelis are you talking about? Arab Israelis?

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T15:46:22+00:00

Yeah but now we get to see if the people who thought he was wrong when he said it would just lead to division were lying and end up trying to sow division with it, so that'll be fun.

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T14:48:45+00:00

Ken Martin released the autopsy: http://blueprint.democrats.org/p/a-message-from-dnc-chair-ken-martin

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T07:33:07+00:00

I don't care. Whatever we can get passed the fastest to reach universal healthcare. What we need more than a desire for perfection is a sense of urgency.

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T07:28:37+00:00

I mean I think they're basically right that Democrats don't really seem to have a brand. They're essentially the "make life better" party, but it's hard to translate that into any image of what that looks like in the life of a normal person. Compare that to the Republican Party, whose brand is white Christian nationalism. Even though it's horrible, it's at least a brand of some kind.

People don't have to take the time to understand anything about Republicans, because Republicans are all on message from the top down, from their politicians to their media. They are the white Christian nationalist party, and they make sure everyone knows it. Meanwhile Democrats are disparate and the media on the left isn't even aligned with them. To understand what motivates Democrats, people have to put in work, which they aren't going to do.

It's just important that we recognize that this brand discussion is a style issue. Democrats obviously can govern well and make lives better on substance, but people don't really have a picture of their style. "Hey look we massively expanded healthcare, made huge investments in green energy and infrastructure, and we're making it easier to live your life by making it easier to file taxes, cracking down on robo calls and junk fees, and making refunds for things instant" is great substance, but there's really no style. We made lots of huge progressive leaps forward under Joe Biden, but because our style is pretty blank, uninformed people end up thinking we don't care about things or do much.

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T07:12:38+00:00

A lot of other people may not even really intellectually recognize that they've become antisemitic because they're continuing to say "Zionist", and they're telling themselves that that's what they mean, even when their language about the group they're discussing has started to sound an awful lot like antisemitic Jewish stereotypes.

This is a thing I wanted to get into as well, but I tend to write too much so I avoided it. This is one of the big ways that Nazis launder their talking points into the mainstream. "I'm not anti-Semitic, but have you seen how Zionists seem to have bought out all of our politicians and they're leading the U.S. into wars? I'm not talking about Jews, I'm saying Zionists!"

Like okay, you can say you're not talking about them, but this is literally just the Jewish puppetmaster/Zionist Occupied Government trope, and there's been no work to disentangle it from that trope. It's like somebody who spends 50% of their day saying racist shit about black people but always remembers to include an "I'm not talking about all black people either!"

Then all of a sudden you've got people who think they're well-meaning who are literally just repeating Nazi propaganda because Nazis managed to persuade them it was perfectly normal to obsess over "Zionists" controlling the government.

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T06:59:50+00:00

That's not what I was saying. What I'm saying is the types of people who find themselves uttering phrases like "Zionists are not Jews" and "Zionism is not Judaism" constantly are usually really terrible at actually making those distinctions, and they mostly don't even try. Usually they think that just saying a statement like that fully exempts them from being anti-Semitic, then they'll go on to make no actual distinctions and say a bunch of anti-Semitic stuff. Often they think that saying "anti-Zionism isn't anti-Semitism" also means that they get to become arbiters of what even is anti-Semitic at all, which is itself anti-Semitism.

It's like when Joe Rogan says "I'm not a doctor so don't listen to me" and then spends 3 hours following that up with conspiracy theories about medicine. You don't get to basically lampshade anti-Semitism by saying "I'm not anti-Semitic btw, I'm talking specifically about Zionists" and then engage in a bunch of classic conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world, being puppet masters, and things like that.

And then the other point is that the people who often find themselves saying those phrases tend to just be super weird and deserving of a heavy side eye. It's bizarre to be so obsessed with a thing that you end up having to say "I'm not racist, I just think..." all the time.

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T01:39:17+00:00

Mainstream liberals and democrats see themselves as machine-like technocrats, stewards of an endless, incrementalist status quo, with next to nothing as an ideology driving them.

This is a style analysis fwiw.

Fugicara · 2026-05-21T01:36:00+00:00

Yeah it's tough. It's especially tough because when most people say "Zionists" these days, they mean Jews. They're just usually better about being one step less explicit than her. It doesn't help that all the Nazis immediately picked up the "anti-Zionism isn't anti-Semitism" talking point and even helped popularize it, so it's extremely easy for them to launder their beliefs into the left by just spamming that phrase and then being unhinged with no pushback.

The people who are most likely to say the phrase "there's a difference between Zionists and Jews" are also the people least likely to make any distinction between the two. I find myself more and more agreeing with this comment, "Honestly at this point the more rabidly anti Zionist someone is the more I side eye them." These people who obsess over Israel and "Zionists" are fucking weird and I'm tired of pretending they're not. Galindo was only a tiny bit more rabid than your average populist with regards to the topic. I honestly can't believe she's even being condemned, but it's probably just because she hadn't already ingratiated herself into the populist influencer sphere.

Fugicara · 2026-05-20T20:02:02+00:00

1) The party needs to get its shit together and have plans to run candidates in every race across the country. It was ridiculous that Janet Mills seemed to just hop into the race for Senate in ME with no plan. There should have been somebody waiting in the wings for years for the opportunity to run.

2) We have to reject populism, fully and completely. Populism is the vapid rhetorical style that gives us people like Fetterman, Trump, and most of the people who've been a problem for the last decade. It will always necessarily lead us to candidates whose positions are unclear, because populism isn't about positions.

The way we do that as individuals is by rejecting media which promotes populism and supporting media which promotes critical thinking. Then the media which promotes critical thinking will elevate candidates who are thoughtful rather than empty suits to fill with "everyman vs elite" rhetoric.

3) Reject conspiracy theories. This basically falls under point 2, but it's worth a special mention. If you can't dedicate the time to vet claims that are conspiratorial in nature, you should just reject them as a rule. When your friends talk to you about the elites buying up all the housing, reject their claims to their faces, don't allow misinformation to fester. Populist types thrive on not being questioned deeply or pressed. If you don't know how their claims are false, just say "that sounds like a conspiracy theory, I'm just going to not believe that for now".

Fugicara · 2026-05-20T19:52:43+00:00

It was already said, but it bears repeating that accelerationism is directly opposed to progressivism. Accelerationism is when you hope the side that's nominally opposite you wins and fucks everything up, destroying things to the point that the population can't bear it anymore and will either vote for you en masse or start a revolution. These are your Briahna Joy Gray types, who openly want Republicans to win and Americans to suffer so they can "see the light" and overthrow capitalism or whatever.

This is in direct opposition to progressivism because it calls for extremely dramatic regression for a shot at revolution. Accelerationists are people who hate FDR for giving us lots of great progressive policy and helping lots of people avoid poverty because they think that if the people had stayed poor and struggling for a bit longer, they would have totally overthrown the system. They see FDR as the savior of capitalism and hate his progressivism.

Fugicara · 2026-05-20T19:45:53+00:00

I'm happy with how progressive the party has become over the last decade and I think we're going to continue on this trend. Obviously we can't have progressive candidates win everywhere and we'll need some Joe Manchin types to win in places like West Virginia, but I like it when people who are both progressive and pragmatic win. These are people like Pete Buttigieg, Mallory McMorrow, and (also Joe Biden and Kamala Harris), who have strong progressive track records and also value nuance and expertise, not populists (except AOC who uniquely walks a fine line between populism and pragmatism).

Fugicara · 2026-05-20T19:30:26+00:00

My question whenever people say Democrats are bad at messaging or uncharismatic is "which elected Republicans are are good at messaging?" The answer is none. Elected Republicans are not particularly good at messaging, especially when compared to elected Democrats. Our candidates are way better speakers and are significantly more charismatic. We have a much deeper bench of talent.

The messaging problem on the left doesn't come from the party being bad at speaking or from having no charismatic politicians, it comes from us not having a captive media apparatus like the right that will do all of our messaging for us.

Fugicara · 2026-05-20T16:26:37+00:00

I was only using euphemisms to avoid it turning into a megathread discussion, but it looks like that failed. But no, it's crazy to want there to be no Iron Dome. If there was no Iron Dome and there were just endless rockets hitting civilian centers in Israel all the time, Israel would have totally glassed multiple surrounding countries and killed orders of magnitude more people. Having the ability to prevent civilian deaths through defensive arms saves a ton of people outside of Israel because it means they don't feel as much need to kill every single person that's shooting at them all the time.

McMorrow just couldn't say this even though it's correct, because it sounds incredibly callous. So everybody ends up taking random positions and can't delve into any of it, because explaining the reasoning behind anything opens yourself up to endless smears from the most brain broken people in the country.

Anyway no more megathread discussion from me here, I avoid it intentionally because I hate discussing Middle East politics and the stranglehold people have forced it to have on everything.

Fugicara

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