It’s radical Last-Thursdayism

I think there’s (at least) two factors here: the first being that western leftists in general (it’s not even necessarily based on sect, I’ve seen this in most major tendencies) still have brainworms from the (capital-L) Liberal society they grew up in and so have weird views on certain issues (I won’t even deny that I don’t still). I mean, truthfully, most leftists around the world have weird views on certain subjects, not just western ones, but the West has absolutely astounding propaganda networks and techniques, so much so that most don’t even think that they could be propagandized - that’s a thing that non-democratic countries do, and we live in democracies!

And second, there’s can be a tightrope to walk on some scientific issues. Like, take the coronavirus vaccines for instance - there are people who argued, from the left, that because all these massive pharmaceutical industries are only interested in profit and not really for curing anybody of anything, that we therefore should oppose the vaccines. This is obviously a harmful, crank belief, but one can see how by opposing everything a giant corporation and the imperialist and racist etc American government tells you to do, that you might consider yourself “more of a leftist” regardless of what that thing actually is. In that case, you might even try and adopt crank scientific positions by only paying attention to papers that suggest that vaccines don’t do anything, or even harm people, while ignoring the vast majority that correctly claim that they are beneficial to take and that people should take them. If you’re that person, you might think “Oh, I believe the scientists on all these other issues, but on THIS one I think the influence by X corporation is just so high that all of these papers are biased in favor of vaccines; if anything, I’M the one who’s more strictly obeying the scientific method!” Again, they’re obviously wrong, but if you already disregard (as many of us should) the findings of very official-sounding thinktanks that are actually funded and staffed by capitalist ghouls, then disregarding actual science might be an easy jump to make for some “leftists”.

In the broad sense of “using euphemistic language”, obviously quite often, and it’s not always intended to be bad even if it is obfuscating the truth - but only really when doing things like explaining complicated topics to a very young child, or when both people in the conversation know that doublespeak is being used (e.g. saying “he’s in a better place now”, which is technically hiding the truth with something more pallatable if you didn’t already know that that phrase is synonymous with “he died”.)

In politics, which is the most appropriate place to use the term, I would argue it’s a standard, even characteristic, part of capitalist politics and economics, because the actual truth of the matter is directly opposed to the interests of the working class, and you do not want to anger them or encourage them to organize in opposition.

“Increasing efficiency in X sector” simply means “We’re going to fire a bunch of people and reduce the money we spend on it with no increase in quality of service.”

“We should cut social security spending and stop giving handouts so people work harder” simply means “We need to increase the profits of the capitalist class, and so hundreds, thousands or even millions of people will have to suffer and die.”

“We should restore freedom and democracy in X country” simply means “This country is opposed to our capitalists in one way or another and we should kill their leaders stopping us from having greater market access, even if that plunges that country into years of suffering” for example in Libya. Countries with dictatorships and monarchies that are subservient to American rule are rarely targetted - if anything, several of them were put there by America itself (e.g. Pinochet).

Hell, the words “market access” in that previous one is just doublespeak for “widespread exploitation of that country’s resources and institutions”, like how the ex-Soviet states were massively privatized under the Shock Doctrine and their resources harvested for Western capitalists.

One of the important first steps for any leftist is seeing these phrases for what they actually are, because otherwise you just continue to exist in the dreamy world of capitalism where actions are disconnected from consequences, and the problems and what caused those problems are shrouded in fog and confusion and become difficult to discuss. For example:

“Wow, cool, we should definitely increase efficiencies in the healthcare sector! Efficiency is a good word that means good things!” -> five years later -> “Dang, it sucks how our healthcare sector is in such dire straits, look at these long waiting lists, look at these burned-out nurses, how could this have possibly happened? Perhaps we didn’t increase efficiences enough! As efficiency is a good word that means good things, it is inconceivable to me that it might have done something bad!” -> read a post online from a leftist -> “This person is saying that we should hire more nurses and doctors and give them free degrees and training and lower housing/rent prices! Don’t they know that this will decrease efficiency and lead to - gasp! - bloating in the healthcare sector? That’s how we got into this bad situation in the first place! Socialists are so ridiculous, they need to read a book on the subject because they clearly don’t see what is patently obvious to people like me, who can see common sense without even needing to have read a book on it, I’m just that smart and read all the articles! (most of which are owned by the people trying to privatize healthcare)”

It’s likely that at no point have the people arguing for “increasing efficiency” actually laid out exactly what they mean by that word, or if they have then it’s couched in further doublespeak (“incentivizing hard work” = “increase hours without a meaningful pay rise so we can fire people and save labor costs”), whereas because left-wingers are too honest to come up with their own doublespeak phrase for what we propose, we have to lay it out bare.

who has donated a lot of money to charity

where did they get that money in the first place? the dollar mines? the grand tree of bills? if the only way to get money is to work for it and dollars don’t magically fall from the sky, which I think is a reasonable theory, then it’s necessarily true that they stole it from us. not even being glib, that individual person didn’t do the labor to get that much money - it’s literally impossible, it would take millions of years of work to get billions of dollars at any reasonable wage - they had to take the surplus value of the labor of other people to obtain it.

it’s akin to a thief stealing the money of a group of people and then giving a fifth of it back and demanding we bask in the light of their charity

there are people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, etc who still believe this

Winter offensive is very likely because the Grande Armée is getting French winter gear and Russians are getting… whatever they get, so they’ll probably freeze.

Yes, they love to talk about how their governments failing are the fault of everyone else

Alright, here’s a fun experiment we should try: you know what America did to North Korea? Let’s allow, say, China, do the same thing to America. That includes:

• Destroy almost literally every single building in the country, including factories, hospitals, and schools.

• Kill 15-20% of the entire American population.

• Destroying all the irrigation dams and other structures so that farming is made incredibly difficult.

• Bombard the country with so many bombs that the people are forced to live underground and only farm at night.

I think this will be a fair experiment to see if American capitalism can compare with socialism when the rubber meets the road.

Old people aren’t really the problem, capitalists are

I’m going to assume that you’re being facetious when you talk about “culling” them (otherwise that’s pretty concerning). many old people are annoying, many of them are downright hostile to any progress whatsoever, but they, and the viewpoints they hold, are the symptoms of a much larger problem.

Of course Russia should get special treatment! They were America’s greatest foe in the Cold War!

The US not letting Russia into NATO might be their single greatest error. Ever.

I personally can’t think of anything that’s happened with NATO since 2002, so you might have a point here

I’ve seen this on reddit and other hellholes from time to time

most people tend to have a degree of separation from it, like early on in the war when people were calling for a no-fly zone over Ukraine (which would have necessarily meant NATO strikes into Ukraine or Russian territory, which would put us at the closest humanity has ever been to a nuclear exchange); about mid-way through the war when some countries were trying to form a “coalition of the willing” (article is more recent than when I was thinking though) to enter Ukraine that wasn’t technically NATO forces but like, my god, you’re really cutting it fucking close there; and some people nowadays are musing if F-16s could be used from NATO territory

there’s also been some vague threats from time to time over Kaliningrad but luckily that’s never escalated to outright military rhetoric, at least not yet.

I don’t even get how this one is a whataboutism to be honest, you literally stated that war criminals can’t celebrate with Nobel Prize winners and then somebody pointed out that there will be in fact be representatives from countries that have committed war crimes, or more accurately, have fulfilled every qualification for being war criminals but haven’t been sentenced or punished because they control the institutions.

if you’d have said “Russian, Iranian, and Belarusian war criminals can’t celebrate…” then you’d still be a complete fucking dipshit but at least you wouldn’t be totally incorrect in your accusation.

idk, I think I prefer the constant fear, at least compared to the bloodthirsty calls for nuclear war to begin over Ukraine because ackstually Russia’s nukes don’t work anymore, and also nuclear war isn’t really that bad anyway

I have secret intelligence that the actual reason Putin didn’t join NATO is because he was angry that Romania joined first because he wanted to be the first country starting with R in NATO. NATO officials begged, pleaded with him to join the organization, but he’s just such a petty man.

Don’t you dare call me a fucking liberal.

By and large, we are only hostile to those who are hostile to us first. Perhaps the onus is on you to stop spewing hyperreactionary sewage onto the internet that is easily disproven by even 10 minutes of research, rather than expecting us not to respond when you say that shit and then acting like “Oh, golly gee, golly me! I could not have foreseen that people would have been angry at me when I stated this godawful take!”

Starting out conversations by calling us genocide-denying fascists who are only pretending to be LGBTQIA+ for plausible deniability is obviously going to get you fucking swarmed in return, don’t act like you didn’t do anything and you’re just a poor little meow meow trying to have civil discussions

they have no idea how anything works, they can’t downvote, they’re easy to ban, and they are so damn fun to troll.

ironically enough, this was a large portion of the reason why we federated with you - fascists like you haven’t read a book or essay since high school and so fucking easy to dunk on, so we wanted to have some fun with you. it’s almost like shooting fish in a barrel, you make it too straightforward.

unfortunately the only line you can say is “buuuhhhh Xinjiang Xi Jinping genocide?!?!!” so there’s no real constructive discussion happening anywhere here, we can write pages and pages of well-referenced prose in response and all we’ll get is “ How’s the weather in Beijing, Chinese bot?” so it’s like, what are we even doing anymore.

but, despite that fact, I vote Nay, because dunking on you is extremely entertaining and a learning experience for everybody

literally 95% of my interactions with other instances’ liberals have been them saying something absurdly reactionary and not expecting to receive any pushback for having dogshit takes, and then going “Ohoho, the Hexbear tankie redfash have arrived to defend the CCP and Putler’s regime! Why am I not surprised!” without offering even the slightest counterargument because they know they have none

we have cultivated a community of genuine good-faith discussion on Hexbear over the last three years and we aren’t about to lose it