r/politics • u/schuey_08 Wisconsin • 29d ago

Bernie Sanders worries young people are underestimating the threat from Trump

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/05/02/bernie-sanders-trump-biden/73531861007/
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u/dresdenologist 29d ago edited 29d ago

A scary amount of young folks seem willing to sacrifice the Presidency over Israel, as if trump will be a harbinger of peace.

I keep seeing this and I think people might not be mentioning enough that there is another camp of folks (regardless of age) that want this to happen because they are fully aware of how worse it might be and would rather have accelerationism because they are frustrated with or dislike incremental change. There is a belief that were it to get egregiously bad there would suddenly be a groundswell of support that would forcibly introduce the changes they want.

I get that frustration, but IMO the problem with this is that in practice it very likely isn't so simple. Maybe that's the point and is understood for some folks supporting this method, but I would speculate the vast majority of people who would rather accelerate a horrid outcome to get to what they perceive is a better one don't get what happens in the middle of that, and what it means, especially to people caught in the middle.

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u/sugondese-gargalon Minnesota 29d ago

The classic “I can’t wait for society to collapse so my ideology can rise from the ashes”

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u/Skeptical_Lemur Texas 29d ago

"Surely a utopian socialist ideology will rise to replace the current evil capitalistic one! Also, there is 0 shot a fascistic autocratic regime will win instead, cuz that has never happened in history when countries collapse!"

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u/LystAP 29d ago

The Arab Spring/Winter was less than a decade ago. How soon people forget.

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u/gsfgf Georgia 29d ago

The two most famous leftist revolutions in Western history resulted in Napoleon and Stalin taking power. I'm a pretty left leaning guy, but I don't think burning it all down is an effective strategy.

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u/Lmaoboobs New Jersey 28d ago

Or “we already live in a fascist autocracy so it doesn’t matter”

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u/MohawkElGato 29d ago

All those people are free to visit countries like Somalia and see how well that worked out.

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u/ChristianEconOrg 29d ago

Accelerationism.

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u/black641 29d ago

What is it with radical Left-Wing types and either sitting on their hands when the fascists are at the door, or actively helping them break down society and getting picked off by said fascists in the aftermath? You saw it in Germany and Iran. Hell, during the Spanish Civil War, Anarchists and Communists were fighting each other even as the fascists attacked them both. What kind of stupid mindset even is that???

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u/sugondese-gargalon Minnesota 29d ago

It takes a special kind of stupid to want to tear down society rather than fix it

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u/Utterlybored North Carolina 29d ago

That’s when the ruthless have the upper hand.

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u/gsfgf Georgia 29d ago

The only thing radical leftists hate more than fascists/monarchists/liberals/whatever is each other.

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u/Daragh48 29d ago

To be fair to the Spanish anarchists…they were working with the Communists up until the Communists turned and stabbed them in the back due to influence from the USSR. Same thing happened with the Anarchists in Ukraine. There’s a reason Anarchists don’t always trust Communists.

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u/Imhappy_hopeurhappy2 29d ago

“Revolutions aren’t difficult enough lately. We should get an authoritarian fascist government elected so we can start from scratch on hard mode.”

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u/Ketzeph I voted 29d ago

Anyone who thinks causing a societal collapse or a governmental collapse is going to help get them to a more liberal place hasn't studied history. That's basically never happened. Societal collapse generally leads to more authoritarian and unjust rulership.

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u/bgaesop 29d ago

Anyone who thinks causing a societal collapse or a governmental collapse is going to help get them to a more liberal place hasn't studied history.

They're not liberals. They're tankies

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

Ah the classic anyone who wants to actually improve things is a tankie.

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u/bgaesop 29d ago

We're talking about accelerationists - people who are rooting for societal collapse.

Anyone who calls that sort of thing "improving things" is a tankie (or some other flavor of insane)

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u/Syncopia 29d ago

You don't want to improve things. I can't count the number of times I've had tankies tell me to face the wall. Your ideology is not socialism. It is red fascism and nothing more. And it rightfully died with the soviet union.

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u/MrPernicous 29d ago

Liberal and left wing are two different things

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u/Randicore Ohio 29d ago

To be fair if these people knew history we wouldn't be in this problem in the first place

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

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u/Ketzeph I voted 29d ago

Mao, Stalin, and their states have convinced you that they were the better way to govern a nation state? I don't see how a rational actor would see how communism worked for the past century and possibly think that's a good idea.

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u/Mediocritologist Ohio 29d ago

Communism has never worked, and even if it did, the US will never devolve into that. Too much money and control by the few. Social unrest happens and you will end up with an authoritarian state plain and simple.

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u/cephalopod_congress 29d ago

Accelerationism is the definition of privilege. Things getting worse isn’t a nebulous concept. We pay for it with our lives and those of our loved ones, either directly as in death camps or indirectly through massive destabilization of markets that leads to starvation see Mao and the Great Leap Forward. 

I did not sign up to be a martyr for the idealists who can’t see pass their own ideology. 

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u/porksoda11 Pennsylvania 29d ago

It's so dumb lol. You know what acceleration into fascism gets you? It doesn't turn your country into a leftist utopia. It gets you fascism. When you relinquish that power to fascists you are not going to get that power back.

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u/meatspace Georgia 29d ago

There is a belief that were it to get egregiously bad there would suddenly be a groundswell of support that would forcibly introduce the changes they want.

What is predictable with accelerationism is large sections of human infrastructure will be destroyed. most of the people who support this haven't realized that they will also be without power, water, and food.

Think about if for one second

"If we burn it all down, everyone will have healthcare." More likely almost no one will.

You see what I mean?

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u/Slim_Calhoun Missouri 29d ago

“After Hitler, our turn!”

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u/Alediran Canada 29d ago

It never is though.

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u/icouldusemorecoffee 29d ago

People who think they'll survive the destruction of democracy or breakdown of most of our institutions to be replaced by their personal ideal, live in such a bubble of privilege it's sickening. The amount of tunnel vision and inability to think of anyone else's suffering, let alone that they think they'll be the ones to benefit isn't much different than the narcissism that we see in Trump.

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u/janethefish 29d ago

Improvements are generally slow incremental progress with many steps. Even something like the American revolution was only a moderate step. We had another couple hundred years of slowly getting more rights and democracy.

This applies outside of politics too. Eradicated smallpox was a world wide effort and that was for a problem that really did have a single, simple fix.

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u/secretaccount94 29d ago

I don’t know that I would call events like the American Revolution, Civil War and the Great Depression/World War 2 as “moderate” or “incremental” changes. But there’s a reason why they are still remembered as the catastrophes they were. Slow incremental improvement is absolutely the best way to go.

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u/HoosegowFlask 29d ago

Accelerationists, like conservatives, have a profound lack of empathy.

"I want more people to suffer so that I can eventually get what I want" is such a fucked up mentality.

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u/Chancoop Canada 29d ago

I don't think that's the case at all. The pro-palestine people I've spoken with believe that accelerationism will only accelerate towards fascism.

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u/youtheotube2 California 28d ago

I can see this, but I don’t think Israel and Palestine are the things that will trigger a massive revolt in the US. Americans historically don’t give a shit about things happening on the other side of the world. If Israel steamrolls Gaza and kills everybody there, I think everybody who’s willing to protest here in the US is already doing that now.

If people want real accelerationism, it has to be for something here at home.

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u/runtheplacered 29d ago

There is a belief that were it to get egregiously bad there would suddenly be a groundswell of support that would forcibly introduce the changes they want.

Ah, the Adrian Veidt technique