A small business owner who voted for Donald Trump recently posted a video on TikTok, pleading for help as crushing tariffs on China threatened to bankrupt his operation, which imports alloy wheels. His call for support, however, drew little sympathy from some fellow Americans.
“Votes have consequences,” he was told, with many comments from Twitter/X users relishing the notion that another MAGA voter was suffering because of their political choice. The backlash prompted a second video from the man, in which he dropped several F-bombs while criticizing the apparent heartlessness of those celebrating his hardship.
If you want to defeat fascism we need solidarity across the working class.
Bullying right wingers who are suffering flies in the face of that. It only sows further division.
Yes, they were wrong, they voted for fascisn, I get the hate, but we need to find compassion for these people to get them back onboard.
Bullying them just causes them to lash out, get more entrenched, and discourage people from admitting they’ve been duped.
If you really so desperately need to feel superior to them that you can’t hold back your righteous anger to actually make the world a better place, you’re a part of the problem too.
Because they don’t accept that they were wrong. They don’t regret their decision because they now realise that it was wrong of them to try and push this on other people. They regret their decision because they realise that they have to suffer the consequences as well.
If a candidate came along that said that they would only punish “the wrong people” this lot would jump at them. They are not people who have learnt their lesson.
People take considerable time and effort to come to the conclusion that their entire world view was wrong. A lot of them get their need for community met by the right wing. If we on the left just ridicule and act aggressively towards people demonstrating any amount of second thoughts or doubt in their worldview, choosing to humiliate them rather than using it as an opportunity to broaden their doubts and set them on a bath to deradicalization, we are failing in our role. We are telling them to stay in their lane, because they will find no community, sympathy or compassion outside of their hateful spaces.
Because they always end all of these rants about how unfair it all is with. But I’d still vote for trump.
It’s not like they are genuinely reaching out trying to be better people. They admit no fault they admit no wrongdoing they just want everybody else to make it not be happening for them. They are not little kids they don’t get to pretend that their own decisions have no bearing on reality.
Again, people aren’t going to magically reach that point. “Oh, I lost everything, despite following all of my values. I guess this must be the consequences of my values being wrong” is not a thing that happens in real life. It takes someone to be sympathetic and compassionate, so they feel safe to be vulnerable, so they can unlearn their negative world view.
People don’t change all at once, generally. You don’t go from supporting trump to disavowing imperialism over night. It’s a slow, invisible process, and it can be stopped entirely or disrupted by entering a scenario where the individual feels threatened or isolated.
I am not saying we all just need to link hands and sing kum ba ya. All I’m saying is have some compassion for people who are, most likely, poorer, less well educated and got manipulated, brainwashed, and gaslighted their entire lives into supporting fascism, especially when those people are obviously suffering.
Black Panther here:
Solidarity is a two way street.
These Nazis haven’t done the essential repentance required to solidify againt the genocide they made.
They are the bullying class.
They know what they are doing is predating on all of us.
The only way a predator learns compassion is through humiliation and punishment.
It’s not about moral superiority, but relearning they are nothing without the extortion they enacted on all of us.
Once they learn they are nothing, they have 2 choices: suicide or repent.
A dead predator is better than an active one sabotaging our struggle against the elite.
Now, notice @patrihits asked for selfish donations, instead of fighting his rulers. He didn’t say “I am going to join antifa and end the despot!” He wants his cake and eat it too.
Until he takes the steps of repentance, he’ll continue grifting donations and gambling.
Fucking spot-on.
Firstly, what do you mean by claiming to be a black panther?
Secondly, I’m sorry, but what you’ve written is just not true. You can only learn compassion through example.
Do you think someone who has known only humiliation and punishment is going to spontaneously develop compassion?
Honestly though, I admit I didn’t realize he was just asking for money, rather than just looking for sympathy.
There’s every chance you’re completely right and that he would never abandon fascism. But everything we know about deprogramming nazis shows that it takes compassion. Yelling at them feels good for us and maybe it galvanizes anti-fascist sentiment, but the far better way to do that is to speak out with one voice: “Yeah, it sucks what you’re going through, I have sympathy for your situation, but the people you blame are not responsible for it, it’s the rich, wealthy, powerful, imperialist ruling class.”
The right wing are brainwashed into thinking a fascist violent crackdown will improve their day-to-day living conditions. We know that it won’t. So when people realize “hey I’m a fascist, how come my conditions are so shit?” do you really think “LMAO GET FUCKED NAZI U DESERVE THIS LEOPARD EATING UR FACE” helps more than “you’re right, you have been tricked and manipulated to believe in something contrary to your actual values”?
It means I am an anarchist. I am extremely familiar how intersection and solidarity works.
Not nazis. They learn through the language of violence, as they do not read. They think compassion is fake news, and one should stomp on enemies less they rise up.
I don’t think you are aware how compassion is disciplined. If they only know those two communication skills, do you think you can teach them mercy and compassion when they never were taught? You have to start from the ground up. That is relearning they shouldn’t have the means to exploit others.
The link I gave is the latest video patrihits confirms he will vote for a Führer a third time. He is unwilling to learn.
This message only works if 1) they are receptive 2) if they truly comprehend brown people, white women, and weak men are not their enemies. Most fascists do want to be “the rich, wealthy, powerful, imperialist ruling class.” And THAT IS the problem. They want to be at the top. Because they are not on the top, they beg for donations, not to free us from oppression, but to continue oppressing us. Once they learn oppression is what’s wrong, and they should not use that evil tool, then you can deconstruct the other biases they are not aware of required in compassionate work.
They were taught compassion is a means to an end. Not how we raise each other up, laterally.
We told them this, last election.
Look where it got it us.
Now they want us to donate for their mistakes, instead of owning up to it and say “Ok, I was wrong twice. What do I do?”
Patrihits, declared “I won’t learn at all, and will vote for my oppressor again.” It never came to him “maybe I am in the wrong.”
Yeah, I’m an anarchist too, and I have a pretty decent understanding of the Black Panther Party, though I thought they were dissolved in the 80s. Were you active in the Black Panthers back in the day? Has it become active again? I’m genuinely very curious about what you meant and I’d appreciate more information.
What’s the connection between this org and the black panthers? and when you said that you’re a black panther, what part do you play in this organization?
edit: lol, I just realized on their website it says they’re “veteran led”… linking this org to the black panthers in any way is a fucking insult to the black panthers
Feeding, sheltering, and antifascist praxis.
Tis why I can praxis black anarchism.
I am educated enough to know others can’t be educated, thus settled on vanguardism somewhat.
So is there no actual connection to the black panthers, beyond doing some similar stuff?
Also, holy shit, saying people can’t be educated because of learning disabilities/mental health is a fucking horrible thing to say… I don’t like calling people fake leftists, but holy shit, you have a LOT to learn, my god.
Is it really your comrades’ fault? How supportive should you really be of people who support persecuting others for no real benefit, hurting the nation out of pure xenophobia? Not to mention backing coups in other countries and potentially turning Trump into an American Napoleon.
Except progressives. We should do whatever it takes to appeal to ignorant toothless hayseed bigots instead so we never have to think about moving to the left.
Can you stop assuming you already know that I’m wrong for a moment to honestly consider my position on it’s own terms?
I’m not saying we should soften our position politically, or walk back from our values, to be more appealing to them.
What I’m saying is that mercilessly dunking on conservatives for our own amusement is counter-productive. It calcifies their beliefs and drives them further to the right. We should, instead, take the opportunity to show them a moment of human empathy so that we can widen their perspectives. Or, at the very least, quietly enjoy the schadenfreude, without feeling the need to get a needless “told ya so” moment.
Democrats have spent decades coddling these dickheads while being openly hostile to their own left flank, and you’re saying they haven’t done that enough.
I’m explicitly not saying that. Please re-read my comment and try again.
Yes, the poor innocent trump voters deserve an umpteenth chance and fuck the left. Again.
I am further left than you are. I am advocating from a leftist position. I’m not saying to give anyone any kind of chance, all I’m saying is that acting hatefully towards hateful people will only makes them more extreme in their positions.
As leftists, we need to choose an alternative to hate if we want to defeat it.
Get the center to quit acting hatefully to the left first then.
I defend leftist positions against liberals, centrists and right-wingers literally all the time.
To begin with, the whole democrats/republicans thing is kinda bullshit to begin with. There are only two sides that matter: the working class, and the ruling class. Unless you are able to survive entirely from profits of businesses/rental income, you are working class.
The entire purpose of political parties is to divide the working class. They are bullshit. None of the parties represent your interests, they all represent the interests of the ruling class.
The ruling class are your true enemies, and the members of the working class they manipulate and gaslight into fighting for them are not. We need those people to realize their true enemy if we want to win.
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How many times will you “turn the other cheek” as they say? The first time was excusable, but those pieces of shit knew damn well what they were voting for the second time. They voted against brown people, black people, lgbt+ and those poorer than them. Now it has hurt them, but I absolutely guarentee, these piece of shit will still vote against the working class, the black community, the brown community and lgbt+.
They want those people to suffer because they see them as less than themselves. They divided the country by wanting people to suffer, not the other way around. They can die in a ditch like they wanted everyone else to for all I care.
It’s not about turning the other cheek out of some high-minded idea of righteousness, this is about actually beating them.
We need to let MAGA-lite escape MAGA with some saved face if we want to defeat MAGA.
They are all of them deceived by the true enemy, the ruling class.
I share your anger but we need to realize that party politics is designed to divide the working class against itself. We need to stop doing their work for them.
I’m not a saddistic guy wanting to beat that MAGA voter… but I believe that probably Hillary “basket of deplorables” is right. They voted for ideologic reasons. Including guys wanting “the absolute explosion of system” are a problem.
But don’t be emotional, be rational. Probably take a pleasure attacking this MAGA voter but it won’t solve the problems.
Most republican voters just vote for who their parents voted for. Yes, there are some who are extremely radical and who will probably never abandon their ideology, but most of them do not fit that description.
It benefits the ruling class to divide the working class. That’s why Hillary wants you to believe they are a “basket of deplorables”. But the truth is they are just people, like us. If you were born in the same place and lived the same life as these people, most likely you would have voted Trump too.
Saying that they are incapable of realizing the error of their ways is essentially dehumanizing them, and that is what fascists do to their enemies.
There’s nothing left to salvage.
Edit: in this guy’s defense, he did post this in December: https://xcancel.com/smalls2672/status/2005433402485616792
But I would still never trust this guy with running a lemonade stand after what he did.
He couldn’t manage a lemonade stand in the middle of a desert.
or focus on building a real and viable opposition to the democrats?
you can suck this guys dick all you want, but it wont make chuck schumer and the rest of the corporate democrats with a strangle hold on the party any less cancerous.
Absolutely we need to build resistance communities beyond electoral politics. This involves building solidarity across the working class. That includes people who have voted republican. They are not your true enemies. Your true enemies are the ruling class, i.e. billionaires and corporations.
Most republican voters are not die-hard nazis, many of them are mislead, manipulated and gaslighted their entire lives, including by their parents. You could have been one too, but by the coincidence of your birth.
I’m not saying people should go out of their way to offer sympathy and compassion, I’m just saying that kicking someone while they’re down achieves nothing at all. That’s their kind of tactics - bullying, harassment, etc.
By the way, you might want to remove the casual homophobia from your vocabulary, that’s also pretty counterproductive towards building solidarity.
This sympathy was absent every last time the left gets blamed for the way this shithead voted.
Are you going to use the right wing and centrists acting like shitheads as an excuse to behave that way yourself?
Are you ever going to show any sympathy at all for the left?
They’re actually willing to vote with you if the party ever listens to them. This guy never will.
The party will never listen to them, that’s the entire point behind my whole argument. Voting isn’t going to get us out of this mess. We need to organize the working class, build solidarity, and build a people-powered movement to abolish capitalism.
Oh. NOW I get it. You want something even less likely than democrats listening to the left.
Democrats will never listen to the left. They are a party by, and for, the ruling class.
I know it feels unlikely that we can achieve change through revolution, but that’s how capitalism wins, by making you feel like it is impossible to defeat.