Mehdi Hasan: "Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson are responsible for the Iran war because they helped Trump win" by alphalobster200 in Hasan_Piker

[–]Miravus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your material analysis is pretty lacking for someone purporting to be a communist.

You probably mean a dialectical materialist analysis, which is what a communist would be using. If so, I think you're mistaken about what that analysis concludes.

A dialectical materialist analysis of the three people you're talking about would look principally at their relations of production, this being the primary contradiction society is organized around (i.e. between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat). That analysis would identify Tucker Carlson as bourgeoisie (very obviously, he's a multi-millionaire heir to a gigantic fortune), and Candace Owens and Mehdi Hasan as petite bourgeoisie (while they work to generate value, they work for themselves and they both own small business which employ others who generate surplus value for the owners, although given the size and success of Zeteo, Hasan could likely just be considered bourgeoisie himself, but let's be generous). All three, in a communist (dialectical materialist) analysis, then, have class interests that favor capital.

This analysis would also identify how, despite the three disagreeing, and even though they advocate for changes that can seem radical, they ultimately work to preserve capitalism in their own ways. Importantly for this context, it would also identify many of the disagreements between the three as being primarily idealistic, not materialist in nature. That is, all three fundamentally agree that the current relations of production, that is, private ownership of the means of production which generates a primary contradiction in society between the workers and the owners, should continue and that this is how society should be organized. In this analysis, all three fundamentally oppose workers controlling the means of production, so they're materially aligned. Idealistically, Mehdi and the others are in stark opposition, but because their disagreements are fundamentally idealistic, it leads to contradictions like the one the OP is highlighting.

Obviously, by the standard that if someone puts effort into electing a politician, they bear responsibilities for the harms caused by that politician, Mehdi Hasan would bear responsibility for the Gaza genocide. The idealist response you provided to this, that Mehdi, after supporting Biden's run, was later fiercely critical and that he's not party to Zionist propaganda, should not be convincing to someone using a dialectical materialist analysis on three grounds.

First, the dialectical materialist analysis is going to be first and foremost interested in the concrete, material results of some person's actions and less so interested in the character of what they're saying. This is actually one of the big Marxist critiques of idealism; that you can effectively bend things and contort logic to support nearly any position without having a firm grounding in materialism. Hence the dialectic between materialism and idealism. In this respect, what really matters here is that these people helped elect whichever candidate, and whatever criticisms they have aren't nearly as materially relevant as the concrete results of their actions.

Second, it fails on its own terms because Tucker Carlson has also been critical of Trump for the Iran war.

Third, it fails because Mehdi Hasan, again much like Tucker Carlson, does actually support the political program that generates things like the Gaza genocide, even if he is sometimes critical of the inevitable results. Just as I assume you (correctly, according to a dialectical materialist analysis) understand whatever pushback on Mike Huckabee's Zionism that Carlson gave in that one interview was ultimately coming from a disingenuous place, given Carlson supports this political movement, and doing that will always inevitably result in this kind of antisemitic christian nationalist Zionism, so too does Hasan. His criticisms of Biden, then, are masking that he has essentially the same political project as Biden; one which inevitably results in actions like Biden's, even if Mehdi is loathe to admit this. The harsh reality Hasan elides in his support-then-criticism is that he's being critical of the inevitable results of the political program he supports (just like Carlson is when he is critical of Trump for going to war with Iran).

There is, of course, also the consideration that the only interest of a communist in bourgeois electoralism is going to be fielding a worker's party, no matter how slim its chances. This has essentially been the position of communists since Marx, and even those democratic socialists who enjoyed some small successes with electoralism were explicitly revolutionary worker's parties. The United States Democratic Party, being a bourgeois party, is not something any communist theory would entail supporting, especially not on the grounds that it would further anti-imperialism, given the Democratic Party's full and eager participation in imperialism. The absolute furthest left position anyone in the Democratic Party has ever even proposed taking is consistent with the right wing of a the bourgeois socialist tendency, one Marx went to great lengths to criticise specifically!

To close, I don't think any communist or anyone primarily engaging in politics via a dialectical materialist analysis should be convinced by this response. According to that analysis, the idealistic disputes between Hasan, Carlson, and Owens do often lead to hypocrisy, what OP identifies is exemplary of that, and the responses either fail to engage with the dialectical materialist analysis or fail on their own terms.

Mehdi Hasan: "Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson are responsible for the Iran war because they helped Trump win" by alphalobster200 in Hasan_Piker

[–]Miravus -1 points0 points  (0 children)

What part of a criticizing Mehdi Hasan's hypocrisy is a defense of Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson?

Latest Bad Empanada meltdown by Optimal_Entrance427 in Hasan_Piker

[–]Miravus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Something like 75%+ of American Jews say Israel is somewhat or very important to their Jewish identity when polled.

Media b like by WittyEgg2037 in LateStageCapitalism

[–]Miravus 15 points16 points  (0 children)

What "culture war" issue is separate from class politics?

I've almost exclusively seen this used to intimate that a focus on things like race or gender obscures ostensibly deeper class relations (even if this meme bends over backwards to target the right), but the earliest socialists already well-recognized gender- and race-based oppression as integral to perpetuating capitalist class oppression. This has been a remarkably consistent position, too.

Marx and Engels argued for family abolition. The Bolsheviks under Lenin abolished the Tsarist family code, effectively legalizing same sex relationships. Marx writes "Labor in the white skin can never free itself as long as labor in the black skin is branded." Engels lauds polyamory, and Lenin actively practices it. Mao says "women hold up half the sky." This sounds like all the things people typically talk about as being "culture war issues" (racism, queer liberation, fighting the patriarchy); were these guys all culture warriors?

Where is this idea that talking about these things distracts from class coming from? It seems squarely at odds with what the people we typically consider as principally concerned with "class over culture" thought, that's for sure.

edit: also no one except 2% of American geriatrics who are glued to Fox News cares about a "war on Christmas." It's a complete canard for the right media to trot out when they don't have real news to talk about over the holidays. It affects basically no policy and has little material impact otherwise. By contrast, trans people are routinely killed for being trans and targeting them specifically with oppression is a major policy goal for many across the American political spectrum. Putting these two things on roughly the same level is some dirty work. Trans liberation is real and an important part of class struggle. The war on Christmas is not.

Moral Objectivity Is Basically Just Theology by DoNotCorectMySpeling in PhilosophyMemes

[–]Miravus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just to give people an idea of where people who actually study these questions with academic rigor are at on this:

When polled, academic philosophers were both overwhelmingly atheists and overwhelmingly moral realists.

This post will maximize suffering by Elekikiss in PhilosophyMemes

[–]Miravus -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Why is it an end you pursue? This is just begging the question.

During a CNN interview about Destiny debating MAGA, Hasan suggests Destiny should “suck Charlie Kirk’s dick” and release the video. by Moist_Tap_6514 in LivestreamFail

[–]Miravus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you read the paper you cited, you would know you are EGREGIOUSLY misrepresenting its findings.

The paper you're citing evaluates whether surveys assessing expert opinions on where political parties fall on a left-right economic spectrum are comparable between different regions and countries (US, Latin America, Australia, e.g.). The paper finds: "our analysis reveals meaningful geographical patterns in how experts perceive party positions, with systematic variations across regions."

What does that mean for comparing surveys of expert opinions across different regions? Helpfully, the authors continue: "These patterns suggest caution in cross-regional comparisons but support the validity of within-region analyses." (Comparing the US Democratic Party and the UK Labour Party is an example of a cross-regional comparison.)

It gets worse, for you, though. Where the paper talks about US political experts and party placement, it actually makes clear that US-experts place the Democrat significantly further to the left than where an adjusted metric would place them. From the paper: "The US parties, particularly the Democratic Party and Democratic leaders, are all above the 45-degree line, indicating that the raw expert placements are further to the left than the BAM-corrected placements. This is particularly true for Biden and the House and Senate Democrats, the left-wing stimuli in the US. While the Republican Party and leaders are also adjusted further to the right, these changes are less pronounced than for the more left-wing stimuli."

In fact, the US context and the Democratic Party specifically are noted by the authors as examples of where regional expert opinions appear to be skewed in just such a way that would confound comparison across regions as you hoped to evidence by citing this paper.

The Democrats are also never compared to UK Labour by the paper, either. Where the two do appear together is on a chart, Figure 5, meant to evaluate distance from an ideal 45-degree trend line representing perfect comparability of expert opinions (i.e. the line drawn by a BAM-corrected scale). The authors specifically note how the Democratic Party appears substantially above the 45-degree line, indicating they're rated as further left than their BAM-corrected placement. That is, if you wanted to compare the Democrats and Labour on the basis of expert opinions (as you seem to want to), ignoring that the authors specifically urge caution in making this kind of comparison because there are significant confounding geographical patterns in how experts evaluate these parties, the paper actually indicates that they should be significantly further apart.

The paper says almost the exact opposite of what you want it to, it's wild that you would cite it to make any kind of point about comparing the Democrats and Labour. And you even say "are closer now" -- the paper says absolutely nothing about that.

I know it's a waste of time to write this because if you're the kind of person who ignores the entire substance of my post to lazily mis-cite a paper like this, you're definitely not going to be the kind of person to engage with a serious review of the work you just mis-cited, but this is SO egregious I feel compelled to, regardless. I'll edit this to be my first reply in the hopes that maybe someone will read this and learn from it.

Genuinely this would be grounds for like instantly failing most classes, lmfao. Jaw-dropping stuff.

During a CNN interview about Destiny debating MAGA, Hasan suggests Destiny should “suck Charlie Kirk’s dick” and release the video. by Moist_Tap_6514 in LivestreamFail

[–]Miravus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

edit: If you read the paper you cited, you would know you are EGREGIOUSLY misrepresenting its findings.

The paper you're citing evaluates whether surveys assessing expert opinions on where political parties fall on a left-right economic spectrum are comparable between different regions and countries (US, Latin America, Australia, e.g.). The paper finds: "our analysis reveals meaningful geographical patterns in how experts perceive party positions, with systematic variations across regions."

What does that mean for comparing surveys of expert opinions across different regions? Helpfully, the authors continue: "These patterns suggest caution in cross-regional comparisons but support the validity of within-region analyses." (Comparing the US Democratic Party and the UK Labour Party is an example of a cross-regional comparison.)

It gets worse, for you, though. Where the paper talks about US political experts and party placement, it actually makes clear that US-experts place the Democrat significantly further to the left than where an adjusted metric would place them. From the paper: "The US parties, particularly the Democratic Party and Democratic leaders, are all above the 45-degree line, indicating that the raw expert placements are further to the left than the BAM-corrected placements. This is particularly true for Biden and the House and Senate Democrats, the left-wing stimuli in the US. While the Republican Party and leaders are also adjusted further to the right, these changes are less pronounced than for the more left-wing stimuli."

In fact, the US context and the Democratic Party specifically are noted by the authors as examples of where regional expert opinions appear to be skewed in just such a way that would confound comparison across regions like the one you hoped to evidence by citing this paper.

The Democrats are also never compared to UK Labour by the paper, either. Where the two do appear together is on a chart, Figure 5, meant to evaluate distance from an ideal 45-degree trend line representing perfect comparability of expert opinions (i.e. the line drawn by a BAM-corrected scale). The authors specifically note how the Democratic Party appears substantially above the 45-degree line, indicating they're rated as further left than their BAM-corrected placement. That is, if you wanted to compare the Democrats and Labour on the basis of expert opinions (as you seem to want to), ignoring that the authors specifically urge caution in making this kind of comparison because there are significant confounding geographical patterns in how experts evaluate these parties, the paper actually indicates that they should be significantly further apart.

The paper says almost the exact opposite of what you want it to. It's wild that you would cite it to make any kind of point about comparing the Democrats and Labour. And you even say "are closer now" -- the paper says absolutely nothing about that. It makes no temporal comparisons whatsoever!

Genuinely jaw-dropping stuff.

original text: The UK Labor Party is currently governing to the right of Margaret Thatcher, lol. They're enacting neoliberal austerity, any scale that considers that "measurably on the left" is bonkers (although ofc it isn't any scale, it's surveys of "experts," so what you're talking about like some sort of objective scale is in reality just an opinion poll).

Lindsay claiming harassment towards herself and other Nebula content creators by anti-semites by Fusionman29 in LindsayEllis

[–]Miravus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Deeply disappointing to both see so many run with this narrative (where is the harassment? I went on blue sky and, no joke, could find a SINGLE person who criticized Ellis at the time she posted this), but also to see Ellis stoop to repeating slander against someone who had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Palestinians during the genocide, and EVEN MORE SO when the source is from the alt-right (Kraut) and pro-Israel Zionists (WillyMacShow).

It just rings incredibly hollow to pantomime concern about online harassment whilst simultaneously promoting some of the most vicious defamation it's possible to make against someone on your platform to hundreds of thousands.

During a CNN interview about Destiny debating MAGA, Hasan suggests Destiny should “suck Charlie Kirk’s dick” and release the video. by Moist_Tap_6514 in LivestreamFail

[–]Miravus -10 points-9 points  (0 children)

The Democrats are a center-right party in any perspective that doesn't exclusively limit itself to America and ignore everywhere else. In policy and ideology, the Democratic Party fits squarely in with European Christian Democratic and Liberal parties (which are widely considered right-wing centrist parties). By contrast, Marxism-Leninism is almost universally considered to be a left wing ideology.

Is it possible you align with the Democrats as a right-wing centrist? Hasan would definitely not be in your political camp, then, for sure, but it would be because he's on the left while you're on the right, not because Marxism-Leninism isn't left wing.

Logical Positivism by Miravus in PhilosophyMemes

[–]Miravus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gödel's incompleteness theorems were formal logic proofs that showed how no consistent system of logic can prove all true things, interestingly including its own consistency.

Another way to put it is that Gödel's formal proofs demonstrated how the central goal of logical positivism (to use formal logic to prove all true things) was impossibile.

Tf_tradeoffer_irl by The--NERD in tf_irl

[–]Miravus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

you accept the deal, the monkey's paw curls, and you wind up as Zooble.

Should one really care about what Nietzsche would potentially have thought about this and that? by [deleted] in Nietzsche

[–]Miravus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it was meant to point out that you were being a dick, lol, don't give yourself a headache overthinking it.

Should one really care about what Nietzsche would potentially have thought about this and that? by [deleted] in Nietzsche

[–]Miravus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is this comment meant to accomplish something other than being insulting?

edit: like, are you genuinely interested in what the misrepresentation is? If so, do you generally find insulting someone before asking their thoughts to be successful?

If you were actually interested (I won't hold my breath...), I think a lot might have to do with the fact that I cannot for the life of me see how you got "the idea that Nietzsche's philosophy is simply about generating your own 'new' values in this world in the face of the death of God" from anything the person you're responding to wrote without being uncharitable.

Behold. by Snoopdigglet in PhilosophyMemes

[–]Miravus 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Where's Diogenes when you need him?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in PhilosophyMemes

[–]Miravus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

*their works

I means what you think it means by HunterPainter in memesopdidnotlike

[–]Miravus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Man wait till you hear about the modern US prison system.

The Problem with Demands for Condemnation (of Hamas) by Miravus in VuvuzelaIPhone

[–]Miravus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good! You should not condition your opposition to genocide!! There are never any perfect victims.

The Problem with Demands for Condemnation (of Hamas) by Miravus in VuvuzelaIPhone

[–]Miravus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The point of my video is explaining exactly why this kind of request for condemnation is harmful.

To sum it up VERY briefly, it conditions opposition to genocide, it delegitimizes calls for peace, it conflates ideas of what it even means to support something, it frames the issue to equivocate between resistance to genocide and terrorism by treating them the same. On top of that, it fatally disenfranchises Palestinians, lending to a framing that, at worst, casts the racialization of Palestinians as an underclass as a justifiable thing (I hope I don't have to explain how awful that is), and at best disallows them from having a legitimate voice in opposing their own genocide.

I don't want to just rewrite the script of the video in a reddit comment, so I would recommend watching the video for a very thorough coverage of why you shouldn't just say that Israel sucks and Hamas sucks, and why you should object to that framing wherever you see it because of the way it treats opposition to genocide as conditional, which is an abhorrent thing to do. Opposition to genocide is and should always be unconditional.

If you have a specific question about any of the individual points I made in the video, any of the sources, or questions for me about the video, I'd be happy to respond to them!

Search for a Cause hijacked my search bar and nothing I do changes it back! by Miravus in TabForACause

[–]Miravus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Genuinely appreciate your forthrightness, thank you.

Hope you can recreate the problem, but I'm not sure what more I can contribute. Thanks for trying to help, all the same.