America the land of repressed ideology. Fascist Nazis have to pretend to be wholesome conservatives and communists need to pretend to be free market liberals lol
Nazis don’t need to pretend anymore
I mean, neither do communists. Self-censorship is just a thing.
Isn’t that kind of what two party politics gets you?
Compromise with your own identity to get elected will always happen in a democracy (not to everybody, but always most on some level). Though, the 2 party system pushes it further
Wait, how did CNN get these posts? It seems like they were private. Reddit dipping their hand into politics again.
Most of the posts were made five years ago under Platner’s then-Reddit handle P-Hustle. They were deleted ahead of his campaign launch in August. The posts in some ways underscore Platner’s reputation as an anti-establishment outsider with unapologetically left-wing views. But the labels and tone used in his writings could also prove costly in a state known for electing political moderates.
In another Reddit post that year, Platner reflected on his life after his military service, saying he was “a vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist these days. After the war, I’ve pretty much stopped believing in any of the patriotic nonsense that got me there in the first place, and am a firm believer that the best thing a person can do is help their neighbors and live a loving life.”
You can easily find reddit posts from t years ago through multiple means including the Internet archives way back machine. How they found his handle is worth wondering
a firm believer that the best thing a person can do is help their neighbors and live a loving life.
Scandalous!
These are the kinds of things traditional politicos would thing should cut against you, but in a modern environment the cut the other way (depending on how you are running).
CNN just trying to do the job of fox news from 20 years ago.
My bet is this amounts to nothing.
However, it begs a broader question, of who is actually associating their personal accounts with social media? This seems like the real mistake.
Omg seriously! I bet “DNC Party strategists” have told him to get rid of them to “appease the centrists”.
Jfc DNC. When are you going to fucking learn that we WANT progressives?!
This helps alleviate my fear he’ll turn into a Fetterman.
Not fully, but it helps.
Is he saying communist when he means socialist?
He’s America, so he could be saying communist because he believes in universal healthcare and paid vacation time
That’s fairly radical he probably just believes that corporations aren’t people.
Cooperations are legal entities, and in legalese that is called “a legal person”.
That is the case probably everywhere. Because that generally is part of how you take a company to court, and hold a company responsible.
But only in USA is it taken to such extremes that companies have for instance democratic rights, which is completely insane, because that is not what it is supposed to mean in a democracy.American corporate personhood was used to justify their unlimited spending in elections as protected speech under the First Amendment (Citizens United).
Youre right a legal designation is probably fine but when your adherence to capitalism is so dogmatic you give democracy the middle finger…
Yes that is absolutely insane and undemocratic.
Probably not good for his chances of winning the election.
I was kinda curious about this kind of thing for myself. Sounds like even if I deleted my account all that info is still out there. Thing is I have no idea what the most inflammatory things I’ve even said are over the years.
I’d say probably not relevant but we shall see. Graham is pretty good at talking to Mainers from what I’ve seen and they don’t exactly give a fuck what CNN has to say
I think the comment about rural white people could be an issue. Maine is like 90% rural white people.
are you just speculating or have you spent the time to watch Graham talk to voters?
it’s not an issue.
Speculating. I hope you’re right. But ability to talk to voters is just one aspect here. The number of people who see this story is far more than he’ll be able to talk to directly.
Speculating.
Well you probably shouldn’t be considering that your speculation isn’t grounded in the current political moment. And there is no need to hope. You have the entire internet available to you. You can just know these things instead of baseless speculating.
Wow I didn’t realize the internet could be used to predict the future, that’s amazing!
Your hostility is unwarranted. Chill.
How dare you state such controversial opinions as, “calling 90% of your voters idiot racists might be bad for your chances of being elected”
Predict the future? Bruh.
You can go watch Graham Platner talk to the “90% white” population of Maine instead of just worthlessly speculating, and especially when your worthless speculation is based in a dead as a doornail approach to electoral politics.
Lemmy Left: This American politician is wrong about what he is.
Tbf we are used to being lied to about these things
Communism is one of the systems we know for sure demonstrably is worse for the general populace than democracy.
Others are Patriarchy and dictatorship.Although for 50 years Americans have fucked up their democracy so badly, it’s beginning to look like it doesn’t matter.
But that is only until democracy is overturned, THEN it will show that democracy is obviously superior to the authoritarian dictatorship that is likely to come after.
Even a dysfunctional democracy like the American is better than any of the 3 mentioned above!What would be better would be to strengthen democracy, and improve protections of citizens, and regulate capitalism better.
All of those are best done with a functioning democracy like for instance the Scandinavian model that is based on Social Demoracy.Communism isn’t a governmental system it’s an economic system. It’s competing with capitalism, not democracy.
Completely wrong because it is both, communism is an alternative to democracy, all systems use capitalism in some way to function, even communism, the capitalist part is just extremely heavily regulated, and you don’t have free markets.
Communism was also traditionally called socialism, and the alternative to that is called social democracy, because contrary to communism/socialism Social Democracy is based on democracy, and not a one party system as Communism.So confidently wrong, love to see it.
I’m just curious, could you go into more detail about what you mean by “capitalism”?
Mostly Free Markets regulated to some degree, but even communism although they don’t really have free markets, they still have markets and companies. They are just regulated by quotas instead of supply and demand. And economically that model simply doesn’t work. Just as a 1 party system has always shown to be authoritarian.
Dude, you have no idea what communism is. Any example you pull for communism is likely going to be Marxist-Leninism. And yes the differences between various communist ideologies does matter, because there are various ideologies of democracy and yes some work better than others.
Literally all communism is boiled down to is workers owning their workplaces cooperatively.
You have an issue with Marxist-Leninism, which fair it fucking sucks. Marxist-Leninism differs from other communist ideologies because it believes the working class is not prepared to own their workplaces yet and so require a vanguard party made up of revolutionaries who know better than everyone else and they will manage everything on behalf of the workers.
You me, and most other people can spot the issue with this. That being, power is centralized into a one party state and thus becomes a dictatorship hell bent on maintaining its control. Democracy and communism are not antithetical to each other. Rosa Luxemburg believed freedom of speech and democracy were necessary for communism. Council Communism is also a communist ideology that puts a lot of emphasis on a free and democratic government made up of democratic workers councils.
Marxist-Leninism
Yes Karl Marx actually defined socialism/communism, so if you use something else, it is not socialism or communism but something else.
Just like Social Democracy is VERY different from socialism.The word socialism has changed meaning over time, it used to mean the same as communism, but now some people use it to mean Social Democrat, which is very confusing.
But there is no doubt about what Communism is, that term never changed its meaning, and Marxism is by definition what communism is.
Literally all communism is boiled down to is workers owning their workplaces cooperatively.
Not true, Communism also contain ideas about society, and that for instance child labor is illegal.
Bro all I am trying to tell you is communism does not inherently mean authoritarian dictatorship. Also if we care so much about how Marx defined communism and that that definition is all that matters then no, socialism and communism are the same thing because that is how he defined them. Lenin is who changed that. But since all we apparently care about is how Marx defined it I guess we can toss out Lenin’s adaptions (fine by me, I hate Lenin).
You gotta stop giving people so much authority. Marx didn’t invent communism, he just created the most popular interpretation and analysis of it. And other people have taken that and adapted and expanded it, Marx does not own the idea. There are hundreds of different ideas and adaptions to Marx’s ideas, if your whole perception of communism is based on Marx and the Marxist-Leninist versions you are working with a very narrow understanding of communism.
communism does not inherently mean authoritarian dictatorship
How does that work without fair elections?
Marx didn’t invent communism,
Maybe not, but his definition is the basis from which all others are derived. So any other form needs to be specified IMO.
I am very well aware that no 2 practical attempts at implementation are alike. Hell some of them aren’t anything more than simple dictatorships, like North Korea.Dude you arent even debating me, when the fuck did I say there aren’t fair elections? You are literally hitting me with a loaded question. If thats the way this is going to go, then I’m done engaging with this cause you clearly don’t give a shit about having a mutual conversation.
Can you define what you mean by “democracy”? Because I hear this perspective often from people but never understand what they mean when they refer to “democracies”. E.g. the UK is seen as a “democracy” yet their government is clearly acting against their people’s interests by doing age verification shit and now raiding peoples homes for jailbreaking their TVs.
My perspective is that I don’t see democracy as any more virtuous than authoritarianism as a political system when elected officials aren’t serving the people’s interests.
E.g. the UK is seen as a “democracy”
It’s basically as bad as USA, and also a dysfunctional democracy. They even had the chance to change that in a public vote, and the idiots voted against it!!
A FAIR democracy is a democracy where all interest groups can have representation, although you typically have a lower limit of 2-5% vote to get representation.
And where every vote is counted equally, so a vote in 1 end of the country counts as much for representation as a vote in the other end.
And representation is according to the populous vote and nothing else.My perspective is that I don’t see democracy as any more virtuous than authoritarianism as a political system when elected officials aren’t serving the people’s interests.
Well technically it isn’t really a democracy then, because their job is to serve their constituents.
Of course the worse the democracy the more that can be the case. And USA is a very bad democracy.
Still even that was way better than not having democracy until the Republicans went full blown sociopathic, and was still rewarded government power.
Something I suspect will only happen in a very bad democracy without equal democratic representation by minor parties.
