this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2026
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I had an exchange with a back-to-bruncher who was just starting to wake up to things and they talked about how the US was descending into fascism and that it's maddening to be sounding the alarm but to have noone listening.
I was probably a bit unsympathetic in my response but they were acting very self-important in the way the worded it and I said that we're glad they could make it and that we've been here for a long time and the frustration will subside - it's important to channel it and to not be overwhelmed by it or otherwise you're not gonna be able to communicate your message very well and you also need to focus to develop a strategy for how to address the root cause of the problem because this has been in the pipeline for a very long time and there's no voting your way out of it.
They flipped their shit at me because I cleary wasn't going to pander to them, they were clearly wounded by the argument that it will [E:] not all blow over when the Dems get back into power next, and they said that they've been sounding the alarm for a long time and they got really insulting. I asked them if they've been sounding the alarm for such a long time then were they protesting and raising awareness when Bush passed the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act which enabled this current state of affairs or were they unaware of it for years despite our efforts to get people to listen. (Or were they even alive and politically aware at this point in time?)
Then I said that if this is how they are responding to a white person sounding the alarm in the recent sharp descent into fascism in a post-911 political landscape then how are they going to respond when a person of color like a descendant of slaves or a native American tells them that they've been sounding the alarm on the fascism in the US for generations and that this been ignored up until now because the flames have only just started at the feet of white people.
I know I'm not doing the best job of describing this exchange but it was quite a while back, soon after Trump got reelected, and the person was desperate to center themselves and act like they were the tip of the spear for this realization but they hadn't even managed to diagnose the problem, its root causes, or to have a clear position on how to fix it. It was a sympathybait post, a geniune one but one nonetheless, and they wanted to get lauded with praise and mutual commiseration (you probably know this attitude from the extremely fresh baby leftists who think they've got it all figured out and they straight up refuse to engage with any of the discourse or the history, they just latch onto a vibe or a slogan and they can't for a second figure out that there is a whole body of work that has been produced over generations addressing these issues.)
I get so tired of people saying "This is fascism!!" and their solution is to wear pink hats and vote about it; if you really believe what you think you do then please act like it.
I have had too many conversations that mirror this. Oftentimes when I provide examples of how this "new" thing that they are perceiving has been a constant phenomenon for the past decades or centuries, they become angry rather than introspective. Or they would start to argue that it's different in this way, or that way or that way, and when it's calmly illustrated before them that it's not, they become entirely dismissive.
I have unfortunately seen too many "progressives" and self-describing "leftists" tell me, to my face, no less, that they don't give a shit when I tell them about all the things the US did to my country when their favourite politicians were in office.
Yeah, and this is the thing that I think gets missed with discussions about the left being hostile to newcomers and the right welcoming people with open arms. (The premise of that is a complete lie btw and it's a convenient narrative that whitewashes reality but I'm not gonna get into the weeds on that right now.)
When it comes to people shifting further right they just need to dial up their bigotry and hatred and pro-imperialism all the shit they've been indoctrinated with. Sometimes they don't even need to dial it up, sometimes they can even just start saying the quiet part out loud.
When it comes to shifting to the left, you have to unpack things and learn. But mostly you have to start with unlearning and that's much harder than learning itself is.
When these almost-leftists or baby leftists start doing this, they really do need to confront some harsh truths about the world and themselves or otherwise they are only ever going to reach the Sam Seder level. Being humble and having a willingness to listen and reflect and learn is critical to being a good leftist but the more you dig your heels in with this stuff, especially when you're early in your political development, the harder you're gonna make things for yourself.
Makes me think of libs who both call Trump a traitor but also think calls to violence are beyond the pale, when the literal punishment for treason on the books is execution.
It's the idealism from the programming kicking in. Anyone who is at least somewhat aware of what's going on can tell you that the situation is far beyond procedure and shit like constitutional rights but people revert to proceduralism as the solution because of that narrow window of acceptable political discourse which gets imposed on society, as well as an abject lack of materialist analysis etc. etc.
It's kinda funny, y'know, I see a similar thing happen on a smaller scale when someone is being a chud so I insult their character and they cry ad hominem. It's like - bro, I took the gloves off intentionally and you're pointing out that I took the gloves off while appealing to adhere to the rules? Be serious for a minute. I'm not gonna adhere to convention about politeness and any demand that I must misses the point entirely because my intention was to be impolite. (Though when I do it it's became someone has said some shit that's absolutely abhorrent like advocating for euthanizing people so I don't give a damn about politeness and decorum at that point.)