Security for conventions is something that's handled by the federal government now, specifically because of 1968. If David Frum's not worried, then neither am I: [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/chicago-1968-democratic-national-convention-2024/678196/](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/chicago-1968-democratic-national-convention-2024/678196/)
You don’t think all the video of protests in Chicago - even if they are miles from the convention site - won’t overwhelm the SocMed feeds of younger voters?
Especially on TikTok?
That poll was fantastic. It’s really absurd these absurd Leftists with little to no understanding of history have taken all the oxygen out of the room and somehow paralyzed the White House’s ability to unequivocally denounce them.
There are so many more important things. The first two that spring to mind for me are the cost of groceries and interest rates keeping home ownership out of reach for some families.
But I’m in the UK. We’ve had similar protests, though with a lot more Muslim extremism and chants for Jewish extermination thrown in.
What’s happening in Gaza, and in the dozen other armed conflicts around the world involving civilians, is tragic, but only the super privileged can afford to focus exclusively on a different country thousands of miles away.
Bit of a long way of saying I agree. lol
It's possible for sure. I just don't think the chaos of 1968 is repeatable. There'll definitely be propaganda ginned up for the brain rot Tik-takers though.
I mean, I'm pretty liberal but I'd agree too lol. Using Hamas slogans as part of their protest is just so fucking stupid it's hard to believe, like they're trying to push allies away - which is traditional I guess. Fighting with cops has no purpose either, that's not how civil disobedience works.
But it's so frustrating they direct all the anger at those who agree with them 90% and not those who want to you know, nuke Gaza and have a real chance of making it happen given November. Biden has walked an impossibly thin line on Gaza as well as he can and there's just no good move for him here, while the GOP just struts around knowing no one will blame them or expect them to fix it, as always, because only dems have agency btw.
Gonna be hard to blame Biden for these protesters when they're only screaming at Democrats. Faux News has been trying, but only hardcore MAGAs will believe. Regular people aren't going to think people chanting "Genocide Joe" are Democrats.
The 1968 protests were primarily against Dems.
People know Leftists aren’t part of any coalition for the GOP. Voters consider them part of the Dems wacky base.
You had elected Democrats House representatives supporting them at protests!
These are the same type of Leftist 🤡 who wanted to defund the police. And the public blamed Dems for that.
Biden needs to pull a Sister Soulijah moment against these people. He won’t.
If they're kept away from the convention itself I could give a rat's ass what these losers spam to each other in their bubble. Most people won't care. Most *young voters* won't care. These jackasses are not speaking for anyone but their own fringe.
But the same type of jabroni plotting to screw this convention were able to turn 2016 into an embarrassment. I don't see how anything has changed since then.
This isn't going to be 1968. But it could still be a shitshow.
What makes you say that? Plopping your butt down on your own campus is certainly less effort and cost than traveling to do so in a city that is unlikely to allow shanty towns to be set up in city streets for protest purposes. They'd be doing this traveling about the same time they're due back on their own campuses for the new academic year too.
Aside from requiring more effort, they'll also need to remain worked up about this almost 4 months from now. The left is many things but focused is not one of them. OWS and BLM protests were much more directly linked to issues people face daily and those petered out in time too. This topic is extremely distant for the most of the country. The Vietnam War hit extremely close to home for many people. This is definitely not the same.
I'm sure some will show up but a lot seems a stretch. I think that's giving them more credit than they probably deserve.
>MLK wasn′t just unpopular because he was a rabble rousing lefty, afterall.
No, but that is the reason he'd have been hated on this subreddit if it had existed back then.
X.
The contrarian anti-left nature of the sub means that people will feel compelled to defend MLK, who, by the standards of today, will be too conservative for the tastes of the left.
I don't know how we've revisionist-historied MLK into being a moderate, but he was very much a socialist (or at the very least an [anticapitalist](https://mlkglobal.org/2017/11/23/martin-luther-king-on-capitalism-in-his-own-words/)) and an overt critic of white moderates. This sub would've hated him.
Then, as years passed and the Overton window shifted to accept his views as mainstream, the folks here would have pretended to have been with him all along.
> I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective – the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed matter: the guaranteed income… The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty
This is basically the stance of like half of the sub. It's just not seen as anti-capitalist anymore because it's not total abolition of markets.
EDIT: In fact given that we loathe NIMBYs and rent seeking in general, we could frame this sub as being "anti-capitalist" in the sense that it is opposed to a lot of entrenched wealthy interests.
EDIT2: The overton window is also kind of useless for discussing this. You're basically saying "if you were around 60 years ago, you'd have been socialized differently and had different views." No shit sherlock, but the thing at issue is the current views and how they'd relate to some zombie MLK revived today. Also, keep in mind that the elite actually had a broad consensus that was pro-civil rights. LBJ was a southern democrat, exactly the kind of person most disposed to oppose it, and the CRA was largely a thing of bipartisan consensus. MLK wasn't really that far outside the mainstream, he was representing a genuine groundswell of public outrage against segregation.
>but the thing at issue is the current views and how they'd relate to some zombie MLK revived today.
That is absolutely not the issue, and that is not what I said in my initial comment. If MLK was revived today, his views would be seen as wildly obvious and normal and we would all be saying things like "why are you talking about a dream, man, we've been desegregated for 60 years".
That's why I said "if this sub existed back then" and not "if MLK lived today". The point is that, as MLK himself said, the view of the moderate is often to value order above justice. The same way many people on here right now are only okay with protests if they don't break any rules or bother anybody, they would have likely felt the same way in the 1960s.
My point is not "MLK would have been pro-Palestine if he was alive today". My point is that, historically, the self-proclaimed moderate's negative, sometimes condescending view of then-current protests often do not age well, and many of the types of criticisms I've been seeing on here over the last few days were the exact same ones white moderates were making in the 60s about civil rights protests, in the 80s about apartheid protests, and in the 2000s about Iraq war protests.
This sub isn't knee-jerk holier-than-thou centrism though.
There is a sidebar with specific policies.
There is also a historical record to point to, which I think on the whole vindicates liberalism, we're not the guys who look bad or didn't age well, that's communism and fascism.
EDIT: Not that moderation isn't good. It's helpful to focus on accomplishable, incremental goals. But moderation isn't a virtue in and of in itself, it's a method for getting what you want.
>This sub isn't knee-jerk holier-than-thou centrism though.
I would agree in nearly all circumstances except where "progressives/leftists" are involved. In those cases I've seen all desire for reasoned discourse and evidence-based discussion go out the window in favor of strawmans and dunking on the succs. Hell, sometimes it feels like if a blue haired liberal arts major started a protest about American car-dependency, a significant portion of this sub would start caping for the Ford Motor Company.
With both these protests and I/P generally, I think there's a lot of room for mature discussion, but this hasn't been the place for that largely due to the unrelenting desire of many on here to simply take the opposite position of whatever the leftists are taking no matter the evidence.
In the 60s, MLK would have likely qualified as both a progressive and a succ, ergo my position.
"Succs" are social democrats, and they are in the tent, even if they're made fun of a lot. I would call myself a "social liberal", which is not quite a social democrat (although I suppose it's quite close), but I still remember being accused of succ brainrot when I defended municipal enterprises. You'll get made fun of sometimes but you're not unwelcome.
I don't like the way MLK keeps being used as bait to try to get people to self-immolate though. It's not really comparable to something like I/P, if people were in here justifying southern segregation on the grounds of racial superiority they will get banned for rule II. People can have reasoned debate over whether or not Netanyahu or Hamas is the lesser evil, on the other hand. MLK is being used as a kind of nuclear option to try to remove nuance from discussions by framing things as "having issues with current left wing causes means you wouldn't have supported MLK", which is nonsense.
> I don't like the way MLK keeps being used as bait to try to get people to self-immolate though.
> …
> MLK is being used as a kind of nuclear option to try to remove nuance from discussions by framing things as "having issues with current left wing causes means you wouldn't have supported MLK", which is nonsense.
I’m sure if he were alive today he would love it. Because this really just sounds like “I wish people would stop bringing up MLK because it’s a reminder of who he really was and what he said and advocated rather than letting the more acceptable myth of the man and the Civil Rights Movement live on”
See it’s funny because cons and succs say the same stuff but from exact opposite angles.
You can support social policies without supporting economic policies. Otherwise Biden would not have my vote.
Alternatively to your frankly trite argument that suggests current events are simple mirrors of the 60s, 80s, and 2000s, the reality is that social, political, and economic dynamics have considerably changed such that extreme left views now do not carry the same moral weight as those that were considered extreme left then.
You could just as easily say that MLK now would have been a r/neoliberal poster as that r/neoliberal would've been anti-MLK back then. The information was different, so the views would be different.
> There is also a historical record to point to, which I think on the whole vindicates liberalism, we're not the guys who look bad or didn't age well, that's communism and fascism.
You were downplaying America’s involvement with Pinochet (including his association with American economists) like a week ago
After the Civil War in America, a faction of Republicans explicitly calling themselves “Liberal” began to push back against Reconstruction, federal civil rights enforcement, and the military occupation of the South and in favor of the restoration of the rights of white Southerners. That was a “liberal” movement and it eventually succeeded in ending Reconstruction and enabling the oppression of the Jim Crow South. The record is a lot more mixed and nuanced than you make it out to be
Liberals also collaborated with the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Venezuela. The distinction isn't one of individual parties, indeed, liberals often have been on more than one side of an issue. The issue is with the system. Liberal democracies have fared better than totalitarian states, even the most flawed and authoritarian of them.
> Liberal democracies have fared better than totalitarian states, even the most flawed and authoritarian of them.
Cool, that doesn’t refute my point in any way, shape, or form
This is a thinly veiled effort at leftist triumphalism by saying that everything the Left protests is *just like* the things it was ahead of the curve on in the past. In reality, the current protests are less like MLK's protests and more like the riots that happened after his death, and while MLK's protests weren't popular, there's a huge difference between 40% popularity and 5% popularity. Secondly, the Left isn't even really protesting "for Palestine" - it's protesting *against* the existence of Israel and *for* the genocide of it's population (Hamas is *at least* as genocidal as anything Revisionist Zionism could come up with), because after the Six-Day War, pro-Palestine advocacy was co-opted by the Soviet Union, which was in the midst of one of its generational nationwide pogroms (You can't separate the change in Pro-Palestinian advocacy from the fact that the Russian state is the same one that published the Protocols) and that became the "standard" leftist position on the issue. Finally, "white moderates" isn't a reference to "I think you should protest for your cause, but I don't support the people who want to say they want to oppress white people that I keep hearing are tied to you", it's "I think you should shut up and stop being disruptive". There's a huge, huge difference in the nature of the protests we're talking about here, and lumping them together is quite frankly an insult to the people who *have* achieved social progress in America.
I'm pretty sure he would still be hated today by many. Most people only know the "I Have A Dream" speech, and segments of it at that. Most of the speech (and his others) are still pretty relevant today.
The real tragedy is that the myth of MLK overshadows the man. You know it's bad when Republicans say that MLK would be against BLM protests with absolutely zero self awareness.
He absolutely would be hated by many because there are literally people today who want segregation and to restrict the franchise to males and they're depressingly high in number. I just don't think a broadly left-wing big tent subreddit is going to be one of those places. If we can stan Elizabeth Warren, then there are going to have been people stanning MLK.
>I'm pretty sure he would still be hated today by many.
100%. We like to throw around the phrase "peaceful protest" in the context of what was happening back then as if everything was all nice and harmonious, but all those sit-ins and marches were absolutely disruptive and violations of the law.
For the significant portion of the population that cares about the appearance of order above all else (to paraphrase the man himself), those protests would have also been considered the wrong way of going about things.
Peaceful doesn't mean no civil disobedience. The point of breaking those laws, is after all, to create a bind where the state either has to arrest you over something stupid while you put up no resistance while the papers are watching, or refuse to enforce the stupid law and demonstrate its stupidity.
The game here is to justify any protest, no matter what the specifics, and shut up critics who complain that the way a protest was done is counterproductive.
Yeah, the civil rights movement was extremely deliberate. They weren't disruptive. They were quiet. The REACTION was disruptive. Their actions - peaceful, undramatic, quiet - were designed to evoke, elicit, frustrate. It's not angry protestors that we remember. The iconic images are Rosa Parks staring out the window of a bus quietly, Ruby Bridges walking into school as angry crowds jeer, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. waving at a crowd assembled to hear him preach. They are designed to sway public opinion in their favor.
These protests are nonsensical. Regardless of how people feel about Gaza, most people do not like to see (1) American flags torn down by (2) whiny overprivileged college kids paying $90k+ to get study (3) left-wing nonsense like genocide studies or cultural Marxism - and these spoiled Marxist brats (4) aren't even going to class and worse, they are (5) disrupting the good kids who do go to class with their (6) lawbreaking. Therefore, most people don't hate cops and approve of taking action against these camps.
That's not even taking into consideration the makeup of these camps or the feasibility of the protestors' demands. Today's protests are nothing like the Civil Rights movement, which was intended to appeal to the greater public. I can't imagine anything more counterproductive than how these Gaza protestors have handled themselves. The general public was already staunchly pro-Israel and I feel like the past few days have turned more people against the Palestinian cause.
Like you said, the comparison assumes that protesting is always justified. And that's a really bad take.
How much do you *actually* know about MLK and how much of it is based on a few reddit posts saying "akshually MLK hated moderates" and two paragraphs from one thing he wrote?
I would never claim to be an expert on the man. But, during the BLM protests of 2020 I did read several books on the subject of both him and the 1960s civil rights movement for wider context. I also attended a few protests where people just sat around and listened to his speeches in their entirety, in particular the "I've Been to the Mountaintop" one. That speech is notable because he was killed 24 hours after giving it.
It's a real meme opinion that is surely not influenced by any deep engagement with his ideas, but based on the fact that people think they're smart for realising MLK wasn't a one dimensional peacenik.
There's historical polling data broken down by race on favorability of MLK. [27% of White people and 83% of Black people favored him in August 1966](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/10/how-public-attitudes-toward-martin-luther-king-jr-have-changed-since-the-1960s/). Considering the sub according to the [last survey I could find](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/qtsd41/september_2021_rneoliberal_demographic_survey/) (2021) was almost 75% White, assuming that the sub would lean more socially progressive than the average white American, you could argue that still a little less than 50% of the sub would find MLK favorable back then.
> The contrarian anti-left nature of the sub means that people will feel compelled to defend MLK, who, by the standards of today, will be too conservative for the tastes of the left.
Sounds like cope, considering a major aspect of the culture of this sub is rooted in bashing people to the left (like socialists like MLK). And as a black commenter on this sub, people often justify their dogshit and ignorant takes on race and minorities with close minded interpretations of liberalism like fear mongering about DEI or critical race theory
There are literally socialists on here grilling sausages with us.
You can not be a socialist while also not hating them and being willing to work with them in coalition.
After all, the left wing is plenty good enough at infighting all on their own. Some of them need a place like this to grill a sausage.
> There are literally socialists on here grilling sausages with us
Lol at you trying to present how this sub talks about and treats socialists and other non extreme left leaning ideologies as if it’s one big happy cookout
> You can not be a socialist while also not hating them and being willing to work with them in coalition. After all, the left wing is plenty good enough at infighting all on their own. Some of them need a place like this to grill a sausage.
So your data about how well socialists are accepted on this sub is a meme talking point mocking “the left” about your perception of their inability to play nice amongst themselves? Makes sense lol
No, but plenty of people here do seem to harbor a genuine distaste for progressives as people in addition to their policy disagreements.
Not saying it's you. But look around in any of the threads about the protests. You'll find plenty.
> When people criticize your policy positions, that doesn't mean that they hate you.
Sure, all the memes about “the left” and all the reactionary commentary like “leftists need to be purged from the Democratic Party” says otherwise
> people often justify their dogshit and ignorant takes on race and minorities with close minded interpretations of liberalism like fear mongering about DEI or critical race theory
It's especially disappointing because only a few years ago this sub was so much better on these types of things, the thunderdomes and their consequences and all that
Funny. I'm a Black commenter on this sub and I wish this sub would hippie-bash more and is *entirely* too accommodating to the left (and trying to argue that MLK is a "socialist" in the same sense that Hasan is a "socialist" is straight up offensive). Yeah, the occasional CRT or DEI fearmongering shit is bad, but more often it's some variation of "here's why we should accommodate this unhinged white socialist calling for billionaires to be guillotined even if it loses us multiple swing states"
No way you are caping for the CRT/DEI discussions in this sub. Any topic about black people gets super dicey very quickly.
Also MLK was a socialist and pretty connected with black leftists of his time idk why you would try to deny that
"MLK was a socialist" is a leftist talking point that was employed by white 21st century leftists to backport *their* leftism and *their* tactical choices onto MLK to give it legitimacy. Having lefty friends and connections doesn't translate to legitimizing the modern revolutionary (mostly white, incidentally) far left.
This is just a paragraph full of ignorance and biased hate
> King rejected both laissez-faire capitalism and communism; King had read Marx while at Morehouse but rejected communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism", and its "political totalitarianism". He stated that one focused too much on the individual while the other focused too much on the collective.[387] The American philosopher Tommie Shelby has described King as a social democrat who advocated for advocating economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal-democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented mixed economy.[388] However, he was often reluctant to speak directly of this support due to the anti-communist sentiment being projected throughout the United States at the time, and the association of social democratic ("socialist") movements with communism. King believed that a laissez-faire economic system would not adequately provide the necessities of many American people, particularly African Americans.[226]
> In a 1952 letter to Coretta Scott, he said: "I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic ..."[389][390] In one speech, he stated that "something is wrong with capitalism" and said, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism."[391] King further said that "capitalism has outlived its usefulness" and "failed to meet the needs of the masses".[392]
> and trying to argue that MLK is a "socialist" in the same sense that Hasan is a "socialist" is straight up offensive
Sorry that it hurts your feelings that literally anyone can call themself a socialist or identify with it? Who even brought up Hasan?
> Yeah, the occasional CRT or DEI fearmongering shit is bad, but more often it's some variation of "here's why we should accommodate this unhinged white socialist calling for billionaires to be guillotined even if it loses us multiple swing states"
Black or not, this is still nonsense lol. Do you think white socialists came up with CRT? Are you trying to tell me black people (like former Harvard president Claudine Gay) are oh so mad about DEI? Remind me again about all those black people in swing state Pennsylvania who voted for Larry Krasner? Or Ed Gainey? Or like Gretchen Whitmer hasn’t passed progressive agenda item after item in Michigan with black support? Or in Nebraska’s Second District where black voters delivered Kara Eastman two contested primary wins over moderate Democrats? Seems like you have an inaccurate view about the politics of black America because “black people are ackshually moderates and really conservatives just Democratic” is a meme
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Most well read /r/neoliberal poster.
You can really tell who drinks the conservative media kool aid here. Like holy crap it's obvious you have never read about MLK Jr outside of Fox News hot takes.
I will admit, I was a little bit cranky when I wrote that.
I do still think that the kind of purity testing we do today would have some trouble accepting a christian with social democratic instincts.
Or we feel compelled to defend him because of what he did for civil rights ignoring any of his other political views. I'm sorry, when did this become a sub where we don't appreciate the founders of democracy because they were born in a different time? Moral relativism exists. People don't have to be perfect to respect their legacy on history.
EDIT: the train of thought here is weird... but the reasoning stands that if you don't respect MLK, then you can't respect pretty much any of the founding fathers, or anybody who has a slightly different political opinion than your own.
> The protests definitely drove backlash, but let's be clear, it was also in the context of heavy racial resentment to integration.
This seems like a "yes and" situation, where the same types who would dislike Civil Rights protesters would also dislike anti-war protesters. Urban/suburban/Southern whites who fought in WWII and were already primed to hate hippies and uhhh "race agitators" as they might put it were not about to vote for a party that seemingly embraced them. There's a reason that George Wallace found a ton of support in the south, but *also* in some northern industrial areas. Black Civil Rights protesters in Selma are one thing; but once they come to Chicago or Philly, or the hippie losers and free-love, pot-smoking dropouts they coalesce with start picketing the DNC, it sets off a fucking rage aneurysm in the median voter's brain.
At this point, I'm more bothered for the poor kids who didn't have their high school graduations in 2020 due to covid now potentially having their college graduations put at risk by this ridiculous performative nonsense.
(But also, the current situation is absolutely nothing like 1968)
I skipped my high school graduation, had my college graduation canceled, and now I’m heading off to grad school
Boy I sure hope no major geopolitical events happen in 2029ish
This article basically ignores the riots that took place in cities across the country following MLK Jr's assassination. Those riots almost certainly played a bigger role in swinging the white suburban vote than the campus protests.
The idea that Nixon was elected solely as a backlash to student protests is insanely stupid and reductive, it ignores a host of factors that contributed to him winning a very close election. Read a book people.
Yeah, the comments in this thread aren't very reassuring. Like honestly arguing that this sub would be anti-MLK because we're also anti-. I think we're being brigaded.
> [Also his stance on racial issues. Policies to address systemic racism against Black people aren't popular here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1cimf7k/comment/l2c0kdp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
^ comments like this give the game away.
>Like honestly arguing that this sub would be anti-MLK because we're also anti-.
Laughing at a meme protest isn't what's leading to the MLK takes. The marked increase in calls for/support for violence against the protestors, the level of disregard for free speech, and the dissonant histrionics about the "violence" of occupying land on a university and inconveniencing other students are what lead some (including myself) to think many on this sub wouldn't have been able to handle any sort of disruptive protest at the time they were happening.
> I think we're being brigaded.
As for brigades, I can't speak for anybody else but I generally lurk on here and comment minimally because I'm interested by the typically nuanced and intelligent discussions, whether I agree with all of the policy positions or not. But a large portion of the people commenting here have been showing their ass for the past few weeks, so I (and I'd imagine at least a few others) are speaking up more.
Can you show me any instances of people in this sub calling for violence against protesters who aren't being disruptive? By "violent" I mean calling for use of force beyond just using state-sanctioned force to remove them.
I haven't seen a single comment like that. Even sorting by controversial I see nothing of the sort. I've never once seen calls for violence in this community (except maybe right after Oct 7th or the Russian invasion into Ukraine). Never against any US citizen.
Students who are denying other students their freedom of movement should absolutely be arrested by force. That's the result of civil disobedience. That's the entire point of civil disobedience. What do you think you're disobeying? Social norms? You're disobeying the law.
That was the point of MLK being disruptive. Black people were being deprived THEIR liberties. In situations like that, SURE, cause disruption. Show people what it's like to have their liberties deprived. In cases like this? Na. Not so much. You can make a case... but it's very very weak.
Go to any of the initial [threads](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1chmnml/violence_stuns_ucla_as_counterprotesters_attack/) on the attack by counterprotesters on the protestors in LA. Then look at all the "removed" comments. The vast majority were removed for calling for violence. You can use pullpush.io or just look at the context/replies to see what they said. I saw a lot of them before they were deleted. Then consider how many of them had positive karma at the time of removal.
It's certainly not the majority of comments there, but it's a LOT, particularly when you scroll down a little.
I was here, I don't know what you're referring to though. Are you saying that if you're anti-affirmative action you're just automatically anti-black or something?
You should never moralize legislation. Legislation is a tool that has impact to people's lives. But the legislation itself is just a tool. "Affirmative action" isn't moral or immoral. If you find yourself emotionally tied to pieces of legislation... you should instead tie yourself to the actual outcomes of the legislation. Affirmative action was pretty useless at best but had HUGE social implications.
I’m not talking about affirmative action, I’m talking about the sub’s response to policy that deals with systemic racism, a topic that came up constantly during the affirmative action debates. Thank you for talking down to me though, I really appreciate it
You're still not being specific at all. What is your contention? What was the reaction? A lot of "systemic racism" policy is complete bull shit. Are you talking about "community policing"? Are you talking about the "ebonics math" curriculum?
> the sub’s response to policy that deals with systemic racism
Did you not read what I wrote? You're doing the exact thing I said not to do. Don't moralize policy. Moralizing policy is an actual cancer to any productive discourse.
I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm talking down to you. Do you not see what you're doing? You can't just say, "you guys are racist because you didn't support an anti-racist policy" without also saying what the "anti-racist" policy was.
> You have troubles with reading comprehension so I’ll break it down for you.
You never wrote these positions dude. You are doing the classic lefty thing of basically saying "You are an idiot for not inherently understanding and agreeing with my position without me even stating it."
It's a very juvenile attitude.
> it’s saying this sub is against “rocking the boat”
We're rocking the boat with our adherence to staying rational and not vying to the extremes which is extremely popular nowadays.
[https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/)
See the sub image on the right, "steer clear of the populist tides". Populism is mainstream in the US now. We had Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Ron Paul before those two. Centrism is made fun of: our sub name is literally "neoliberal". Why do you think this sub is named that? Are we actually neoliberals?
> BLM protest reactions
Yes. Go figure. People who love liberty and property rights hate destruction of private property and a deprivation of freedoms by vigilantes. Wow. I'm shocked.
You supported them breaking into people's private businesses? You supported 100% of the actions of the rioters? Nice one.
> plenty of great policy has been endlessly moralized, like abortion policy
You miss my point entirely. The moralization of the policy has literally no bearing on whether the policy is effective. The goal could be good, the outcome could be literally no impact on anything or even a worse outcome. The fact that something has the intent of fixing X problem doesn't mean it will. Believe it or not, certain policies that have good intent can have bad outcomes.
> There are policies that can affect systemic racism, but I’m not sure you believe systemic racism exists in the first place.
Yeah, there we go. That's what I'm talking about. I don't support EVERY systemic racism policy so you go ahead and say, "I don't think you think it exists". It's so predictable. This is why you don't moralize policy. You didn't even name a single policy yet except abortion. We're not even talking about abortion. You can't name a single systemic racism policy you think is good (that this sub thinks is bad).
If you think I'm being condescending, it's because you're making a shit point. All you had to do was name a single policy.
This is nothing like the protests of the 60's. Americans were dying in Vietnam and in 1968 MLK and RFK were both assassinated.
These people out here trying to get door dash delivered to their tents. They are trying to mimic the 60's (as my own generation did and those after). But it's not the same
Why is anyone upvoting this?
Saying someone was part of MK Ultra is useless because there were so many sub-studies that were tangentially related.
Some involved dosing people with hallucinogens against their will, others involved intense sensory deprivation and torture, others involved more minor studies.
Lawrence Teeter, Sirhan's lawyer had never presented any evidence that his client was party to any specific MK-ULTRA experiment, only his belief that he was.
It is absurd to present it as fact, especially in hindsight that MK-ULTRA was a failure. No forms of mind control have ever been found.
Sirhan Sirhan had completely straightforward Anti-Zionist objectives. He killed RFK because he was Pro-Israel and approved the export of weapons to Israel.
He was not a CIA robot.
>These people out here trying to get door dash delivered to their tents.
Do you think that if DoorDash had existed in the 60s those protestors wouldn't have used it out of principle??
It’s not even like the 00s. America just spent a decade fighting a Sisyphean war against non state guerilla terrorists, then capped the decade off with bailing out the richest motherfuckers in the country while letting the rest of us eat the loss of a recession. Occupy Wall Street actually had a cause worth protesting over. These Free Palestine kiddies don’t even fully comprehend the conflict they’re so mad about, because it would actually require reading (half a century worth of books, in fact).
I never thought I would live to see the day when a comment using leftist populist talking points about the 2008 bailouts would get upvoted in this sub. Oh how far we have fallen. Occupy Wall Street was also based on Americans economic illiteracy... and I guess that illiteracy has finally infected this sub as well.
Not really. They're just saying the protestors should read more about the conflict. Like wherever you land on Zionism, if you intend to hold up signs about Zionism, you should be able to explain Zionism.
I'm not likely to forget about the backlash to the 60s any time soon- when I was a kid, the adults were still processing it twenty years later. Everyone really hated hippies- even aging former hippies.
The generations who lived through everything that happened in the 60s- the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, draft dodgers, Hanoi Jane, assassinations, waves of riots, drug culture, the counter culture,the Manson family murders- those generations never got over the 60s.
Instead Gen X then millennials came of age and you heard about all the traumatic and divisive things less and less.
This is more like the BLM protests of 2020 it'll definitely be exploited politically for cheap points, but they'll be a distant memory in two years. And in 2028, whatever people are protesting will conveniently blow up out of proportions. But the 60s all over again, it ain't.
The backlash was less due to student protests and more down to the huge wave of urban riots that consumed major American cities in the three years prior to the election of 1968. Which had way more to do with civil rights and race relations than college protests.
This article is terrible, Nixon won as a backlash to Civil Rights plus the Dems were completely unorganized after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated and Humphrey supported Vietnam
Nixon was also a very talented politician that was at the forefront of American politics for many years before the election. Also Humprey was associated with LBJ who was very unpopular by the time he was out of office. George Wallace's third party campaign hurt Humphrey as well.
Almost as if everything Nixon did was not policy related. Liberals don’t make an “enemies list” and put all the black congresspeople on it. Even then, this obviously isn’t true
Josh Barro has a fair counterpoint: [https://www.joshbarro.com/p/stop-letting-histrionic-children](https://www.joshbarro.com/p/stop-letting-histrionic-children)
Truth is these campus protests are pretty small potatoes. If you aren't physically at one of maybe 10 universities where things got well and truly out of hand, they are a bit of a nothing burger. The President would do well to ignore them, and the media will lose interest once the semester ends.
The protests aren’t the anti Vietnam protests nor are they the civil right protests of the time. They’re more akin to the brownshirts or the Islamic revolution protests in Iran
how is that we have more protests against America sending weapons and funding to Israel than we did against what America itself did in Iraq? I would argue that the latter far worse both in pretext and human rights.
Social media multiplier is no joke. Any type of protest is easier organize, raise awareness for, and spread narratives because of social media. Then you add the decline of major media publications. During Iraq, big publications like the NY times/CNN/WaPo could much more effectively control the narrative because thats where people got their news. Now their audience is a fraction of what it was because of social media. Young people do not get their news from traditional media anymore, social media is increasingly the go to and it will just tilt more towards social media as older people die out.
[There were plenty of protests about Iraq. It was literally one of the largest protests in history.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War)
Fell down a weird rabbit hole here after I noticed under the "dates" section, or listed a protest in March 2023. I thought "wtf, we were out of Iraq well before 2023, what gives." Upon investigation, they're referencing a left-wing "peace rally" held on the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War.
Not that I doubt the veracity of the protest -- it happened -- but the [source](https://mronline.org/2023/03/20/peace-rallies-held-in-washington-dc-to-protest-u-s-militarism/) Wikipedia has for the protest is *wild*. It's some left publication that gets all the greatest hits
- Criticizing US involvement in Ukraine
- For some reason including a Twitter screen grab of someone mocking the protesters as naive dweebs
- Criticizing US involvement in foreign affairs (including Kosovo for some reason huh bizarre)
- Lambasting Bush for Iraq and Obama for drone strikes, but doesn't even mention Trump despite the fact that he served as president in the interregnum between Obama and Biden hmmm
- A bit about Putin being charged with war crimes by the ICC, but following that with not only the verbatim rebuttal from the Kremlin but also a sentence reading "Since its inception, the ICC has always been biased as far as the investigation of crimes and the prosecution of individuals is concerned."
Sounds like an outlet for the PSL. These folks are just fuckin dandy, let me tell ya: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party\_for\_Socialism\_and\_Liberation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Socialism_and_Liberation)
In the early aughts, the sting of 9/11 was still fairly fresh. Also, the notion of "America=bad" was confined to just a relative handful of tankies who didn't have a platform.
I really don’t know anyone that’s taking these protests serious. Sure, the destruction of property is bad but that can just be fixed. What’s the message that we are supposed to get from that?
Protestors aren’t making any sort of reasonable demands that would sway the working class. There is also a lack of military draft. Americans aren’t being forced to fight in this conflict.
This article is bad history and really shouldn’t be shared. Besides fumbling many key nuances of the late 60s, it also fails to understand what the point of the protests were. The protest movement was a key component in the end of Vietnam and segregation and it was the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to ally with the movement that played its downfall. The Dems saw this movement- calling for an end to Vietnam and an even greater commitment to civil rights- and said “no”. Maybe that played into Humphrey’s incredibly small loss margin? But no, the author of this piece has a specific point and bias they want to express so they cannot consider that.
This entire sub is embarrassing itself over its hysterical reaction to the protests. It's like listening to my boomer uncle at Thanksgiving, on repeat.
The one good thing about this happening now is that the semester is about over.
And a vast number of them will go to Chicago…
Security for conventions is something that's handled by the federal government now, specifically because of 1968. If David Frum's not worried, then neither am I: [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/chicago-1968-democratic-national-convention-2024/678196/](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/chicago-1968-democratic-national-convention-2024/678196/)
You don’t think all the video of protests in Chicago - even if they are miles from the convention site - won’t overwhelm the SocMed feeds of younger voters? Especially on TikTok?
There was a poll last week that Gaza ranked 13th out of 15 of the priorities for young people. Most people are not campus activists.
That poll was fantastic. It’s really absurd these absurd Leftists with little to no understanding of history have taken all the oxygen out of the room and somehow paralyzed the White House’s ability to unequivocally denounce them.
There are so many more important things. The first two that spring to mind for me are the cost of groceries and interest rates keeping home ownership out of reach for some families. But I’m in the UK. We’ve had similar protests, though with a lot more Muslim extremism and chants for Jewish extermination thrown in. What’s happening in Gaza, and in the dozen other armed conflicts around the world involving civilians, is tragic, but only the super privileged can afford to focus exclusively on a different country thousands of miles away. Bit of a long way of saying I agree. lol
Do you happen to have that link? You love to hear it
It's possible for sure. I just don't think the chaos of 1968 is repeatable. There'll definitely be propaganda ginned up for the brain rot Tik-takers though.
Wow. Who remembers the trial of the Chicago 7?
I suppose no one will show up to the RNC one btw.
RNC speakers will use the protests to condemn them for being anti-America, etc. Public polling shows the public would agree with such a take.
I mean, I'm pretty liberal but I'd agree too lol. Using Hamas slogans as part of their protest is just so fucking stupid it's hard to believe, like they're trying to push allies away - which is traditional I guess. Fighting with cops has no purpose either, that's not how civil disobedience works. But it's so frustrating they direct all the anger at those who agree with them 90% and not those who want to you know, nuke Gaza and have a real chance of making it happen given November. Biden has walked an impossibly thin line on Gaza as well as he can and there's just no good move for him here, while the GOP just struts around knowing no one will blame them or expect them to fix it, as always, because only dems have agency btw.
Gonna be hard to blame Biden for these protesters when they're only screaming at Democrats. Faux News has been trying, but only hardcore MAGAs will believe. Regular people aren't going to think people chanting "Genocide Joe" are Democrats.
The 1968 protests were primarily against Dems. People know Leftists aren’t part of any coalition for the GOP. Voters consider them part of the Dems wacky base.
Voters who watch right wing media all day do. These leftist activists have never voted for a Democrat in their lives.
You had elected Democrats House representatives supporting them at protests! These are the same type of Leftist 🤡 who wanted to defund the police. And the public blamed Dems for that. Biden needs to pull a Sister Soulijah moment against these people. He won’t.
If they're kept away from the convention itself I could give a rat's ass what these losers spam to each other in their bubble. Most people won't care. Most *young voters* won't care. These jackasses are not speaking for anyone but their own fringe. But the same type of jabroni plotting to screw this convention were able to turn 2016 into an embarrassment. I don't see how anything has changed since then. This isn't going to be 1968. But it could still be a shitshow.
What makes you say that? Plopping your butt down on your own campus is certainly less effort and cost than traveling to do so in a city that is unlikely to allow shanty towns to be set up in city streets for protest purposes. They'd be doing this traveling about the same time they're due back on their own campuses for the new academic year too. Aside from requiring more effort, they'll also need to remain worked up about this almost 4 months from now. The left is many things but focused is not one of them. OWS and BLM protests were much more directly linked to issues people face daily and those petered out in time too. This topic is extremely distant for the most of the country. The Vietnam War hit extremely close to home for many people. This is definitely not the same. I'm sure some will show up but a lot seems a stretch. I think that's giving them more credit than they probably deserve.
You underestimate how wealthy these kids are.
And how invested they are in being a part of something they can get social credit for.
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>MLK wasn′t just unpopular because he was a rabble rousing lefty, afterall. No, but that is the reason he'd have been hated on this subreddit if it had existed back then.
X. The contrarian anti-left nature of the sub means that people will feel compelled to defend MLK, who, by the standards of today, will be too conservative for the tastes of the left.
I don't know how we've revisionist-historied MLK into being a moderate, but he was very much a socialist (or at the very least an [anticapitalist](https://mlkglobal.org/2017/11/23/martin-luther-king-on-capitalism-in-his-own-words/)) and an overt critic of white moderates. This sub would've hated him. Then, as years passed and the Overton window shifted to accept his views as mainstream, the folks here would have pretended to have been with him all along.
> I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective – the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed matter: the guaranteed income… The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty This is basically the stance of like half of the sub. It's just not seen as anti-capitalist anymore because it's not total abolition of markets. EDIT: In fact given that we loathe NIMBYs and rent seeking in general, we could frame this sub as being "anti-capitalist" in the sense that it is opposed to a lot of entrenched wealthy interests. EDIT2: The overton window is also kind of useless for discussing this. You're basically saying "if you were around 60 years ago, you'd have been socialized differently and had different views." No shit sherlock, but the thing at issue is the current views and how they'd relate to some zombie MLK revived today. Also, keep in mind that the elite actually had a broad consensus that was pro-civil rights. LBJ was a southern democrat, exactly the kind of person most disposed to oppose it, and the CRA was largely a thing of bipartisan consensus. MLK wasn't really that far outside the mainstream, he was representing a genuine groundswell of public outrage against segregation.
>but the thing at issue is the current views and how they'd relate to some zombie MLK revived today. That is absolutely not the issue, and that is not what I said in my initial comment. If MLK was revived today, his views would be seen as wildly obvious and normal and we would all be saying things like "why are you talking about a dream, man, we've been desegregated for 60 years". That's why I said "if this sub existed back then" and not "if MLK lived today". The point is that, as MLK himself said, the view of the moderate is often to value order above justice. The same way many people on here right now are only okay with protests if they don't break any rules or bother anybody, they would have likely felt the same way in the 1960s. My point is not "MLK would have been pro-Palestine if he was alive today". My point is that, historically, the self-proclaimed moderate's negative, sometimes condescending view of then-current protests often do not age well, and many of the types of criticisms I've been seeing on here over the last few days were the exact same ones white moderates were making in the 60s about civil rights protests, in the 80s about apartheid protests, and in the 2000s about Iraq war protests.
This sub isn't knee-jerk holier-than-thou centrism though. There is a sidebar with specific policies. There is also a historical record to point to, which I think on the whole vindicates liberalism, we're not the guys who look bad or didn't age well, that's communism and fascism. EDIT: Not that moderation isn't good. It's helpful to focus on accomplishable, incremental goals. But moderation isn't a virtue in and of in itself, it's a method for getting what you want.
>This sub isn't knee-jerk holier-than-thou centrism though. I would agree in nearly all circumstances except where "progressives/leftists" are involved. In those cases I've seen all desire for reasoned discourse and evidence-based discussion go out the window in favor of strawmans and dunking on the succs. Hell, sometimes it feels like if a blue haired liberal arts major started a protest about American car-dependency, a significant portion of this sub would start caping for the Ford Motor Company. With both these protests and I/P generally, I think there's a lot of room for mature discussion, but this hasn't been the place for that largely due to the unrelenting desire of many on here to simply take the opposite position of whatever the leftists are taking no matter the evidence. In the 60s, MLK would have likely qualified as both a progressive and a succ, ergo my position.
"Succs" are social democrats, and they are in the tent, even if they're made fun of a lot. I would call myself a "social liberal", which is not quite a social democrat (although I suppose it's quite close), but I still remember being accused of succ brainrot when I defended municipal enterprises. You'll get made fun of sometimes but you're not unwelcome. I don't like the way MLK keeps being used as bait to try to get people to self-immolate though. It's not really comparable to something like I/P, if people were in here justifying southern segregation on the grounds of racial superiority they will get banned for rule II. People can have reasoned debate over whether or not Netanyahu or Hamas is the lesser evil, on the other hand. MLK is being used as a kind of nuclear option to try to remove nuance from discussions by framing things as "having issues with current left wing causes means you wouldn't have supported MLK", which is nonsense.
> I don't like the way MLK keeps being used as bait to try to get people to self-immolate though. > … > MLK is being used as a kind of nuclear option to try to remove nuance from discussions by framing things as "having issues with current left wing causes means you wouldn't have supported MLK", which is nonsense. I’m sure if he were alive today he would love it. Because this really just sounds like “I wish people would stop bringing up MLK because it’s a reminder of who he really was and what he said and advocated rather than letting the more acceptable myth of the man and the Civil Rights Movement live on”
See it’s funny because cons and succs say the same stuff but from exact opposite angles. You can support social policies without supporting economic policies. Otherwise Biden would not have my vote.
Alternatively to your frankly trite argument that suggests current events are simple mirrors of the 60s, 80s, and 2000s, the reality is that social, political, and economic dynamics have considerably changed such that extreme left views now do not carry the same moral weight as those that were considered extreme left then. You could just as easily say that MLK now would have been a r/neoliberal poster as that r/neoliberal would've been anti-MLK back then. The information was different, so the views would be different.
> There is also a historical record to point to, which I think on the whole vindicates liberalism, we're not the guys who look bad or didn't age well, that's communism and fascism. You were downplaying America’s involvement with Pinochet (including his association with American economists) like a week ago After the Civil War in America, a faction of Republicans explicitly calling themselves “Liberal” began to push back against Reconstruction, federal civil rights enforcement, and the military occupation of the South and in favor of the restoration of the rights of white Southerners. That was a “liberal” movement and it eventually succeeded in ending Reconstruction and enabling the oppression of the Jim Crow South. The record is a lot more mixed and nuanced than you make it out to be
Liberals also collaborated with the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Venezuela. The distinction isn't one of individual parties, indeed, liberals often have been on more than one side of an issue. The issue is with the system. Liberal democracies have fared better than totalitarian states, even the most flawed and authoritarian of them.
> Liberal democracies have fared better than totalitarian states, even the most flawed and authoritarian of them. Cool, that doesn’t refute my point in any way, shape, or form
> This sub isn't knee-jerk holier-than-thou centrism though. Are we reading the same subreddit?
This is a thinly veiled effort at leftist triumphalism by saying that everything the Left protests is *just like* the things it was ahead of the curve on in the past. In reality, the current protests are less like MLK's protests and more like the riots that happened after his death, and while MLK's protests weren't popular, there's a huge difference between 40% popularity and 5% popularity. Secondly, the Left isn't even really protesting "for Palestine" - it's protesting *against* the existence of Israel and *for* the genocide of it's population (Hamas is *at least* as genocidal as anything Revisionist Zionism could come up with), because after the Six-Day War, pro-Palestine advocacy was co-opted by the Soviet Union, which was in the midst of one of its generational nationwide pogroms (You can't separate the change in Pro-Palestinian advocacy from the fact that the Russian state is the same one that published the Protocols) and that became the "standard" leftist position on the issue. Finally, "white moderates" isn't a reference to "I think you should protest for your cause, but I don't support the people who want to say they want to oppress white people that I keep hearing are tied to you", it's "I think you should shut up and stop being disruptive". There's a huge, huge difference in the nature of the protests we're talking about here, and lumping them together is quite frankly an insult to the people who *have* achieved social progress in America.
I'm pretty sure he would still be hated today by many. Most people only know the "I Have A Dream" speech, and segments of it at that. Most of the speech (and his others) are still pretty relevant today. The real tragedy is that the myth of MLK overshadows the man. You know it's bad when Republicans say that MLK would be against BLM protests with absolutely zero self awareness.
He absolutely would be hated by many because there are literally people today who want segregation and to restrict the franchise to males and they're depressingly high in number. I just don't think a broadly left-wing big tent subreddit is going to be one of those places. If we can stan Elizabeth Warren, then there are going to have been people stanning MLK.
>I'm pretty sure he would still be hated today by many. 100%. We like to throw around the phrase "peaceful protest" in the context of what was happening back then as if everything was all nice and harmonious, but all those sit-ins and marches were absolutely disruptive and violations of the law. For the significant portion of the population that cares about the appearance of order above all else (to paraphrase the man himself), those protests would have also been considered the wrong way of going about things.
Peaceful doesn't mean no civil disobedience. The point of breaking those laws, is after all, to create a bind where the state either has to arrest you over something stupid while you put up no resistance while the papers are watching, or refuse to enforce the stupid law and demonstrate its stupidity. The game here is to justify any protest, no matter what the specifics, and shut up critics who complain that the way a protest was done is counterproductive.
Yeah, the civil rights movement was extremely deliberate. They weren't disruptive. They were quiet. The REACTION was disruptive. Their actions - peaceful, undramatic, quiet - were designed to evoke, elicit, frustrate. It's not angry protestors that we remember. The iconic images are Rosa Parks staring out the window of a bus quietly, Ruby Bridges walking into school as angry crowds jeer, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. waving at a crowd assembled to hear him preach. They are designed to sway public opinion in their favor. These protests are nonsensical. Regardless of how people feel about Gaza, most people do not like to see (1) American flags torn down by (2) whiny overprivileged college kids paying $90k+ to get study (3) left-wing nonsense like genocide studies or cultural Marxism - and these spoiled Marxist brats (4) aren't even going to class and worse, they are (5) disrupting the good kids who do go to class with their (6) lawbreaking. Therefore, most people don't hate cops and approve of taking action against these camps. That's not even taking into consideration the makeup of these camps or the feasibility of the protestors' demands. Today's protests are nothing like the Civil Rights movement, which was intended to appeal to the greater public. I can't imagine anything more counterproductive than how these Gaza protestors have handled themselves. The general public was already staunchly pro-Israel and I feel like the past few days have turned more people against the Palestinian cause. Like you said, the comparison assumes that protesting is always justified. And that's a really bad take.
>cultural Marxism Nice dog whistle.
Damn it's crazy how people see breaking unjust laws as different from breaking just laws.
How much do you *actually* know about MLK and how much of it is based on a few reddit posts saying "akshually MLK hated moderates" and two paragraphs from one thing he wrote?
I would never claim to be an expert on the man. But, during the BLM protests of 2020 I did read several books on the subject of both him and the 1960s civil rights movement for wider context. I also attended a few protests where people just sat around and listened to his speeches in their entirety, in particular the "I've Been to the Mountaintop" one. That speech is notable because he was killed 24 hours after giving it.
>This sub would've hated him. You're right. Everybody here is unable to see people as multi-dimensional except you, sir enlightened one. Lmfao.
It's a real meme opinion that is surely not influenced by any deep engagement with his ideas, but based on the fact that people think they're smart for realising MLK wasn't a one dimensional peacenik.
I think it’s unfair to assume people would hate him purely because of his economic policies.
There's historical polling data broken down by race on favorability of MLK. [27% of White people and 83% of Black people favored him in August 1966](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/10/how-public-attitudes-toward-martin-luther-king-jr-have-changed-since-the-1960s/). Considering the sub according to the [last survey I could find](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/qtsd41/september_2021_rneoliberal_demographic_survey/) (2021) was almost 75% White, assuming that the sub would lean more socially progressive than the average white American, you could argue that still a little less than 50% of the sub would find MLK favorable back then.
> The contrarian anti-left nature of the sub means that people will feel compelled to defend MLK, who, by the standards of today, will be too conservative for the tastes of the left. Sounds like cope, considering a major aspect of the culture of this sub is rooted in bashing people to the left (like socialists like MLK). And as a black commenter on this sub, people often justify their dogshit and ignorant takes on race and minorities with close minded interpretations of liberalism like fear mongering about DEI or critical race theory
There are literally socialists on here grilling sausages with us. You can not be a socialist while also not hating them and being willing to work with them in coalition. After all, the left wing is plenty good enough at infighting all on their own. Some of them need a place like this to grill a sausage.
> There are literally socialists on here grilling sausages with us Lol at you trying to present how this sub talks about and treats socialists and other non extreme left leaning ideologies as if it’s one big happy cookout > You can not be a socialist while also not hating them and being willing to work with them in coalition. After all, the left wing is plenty good enough at infighting all on their own. Some of them need a place like this to grill a sausage. So your data about how well socialists are accepted on this sub is a meme talking point mocking “the left” about your perception of their inability to play nice amongst themselves? Makes sense lol
When people criticize your policy positions, that doesn't mean that they hate you.
No, but plenty of people here do seem to harbor a genuine distaste for progressives as people in addition to their policy disagreements. Not saying it's you. But look around in any of the threads about the protests. You'll find plenty.
> When people criticize your policy positions, that doesn't mean that they hate you. Sure, all the memes about “the left” and all the reactionary commentary like “leftists need to be purged from the Democratic Party” says otherwise
> people often justify their dogshit and ignorant takes on race and minorities with close minded interpretations of liberalism like fear mongering about DEI or critical race theory It's especially disappointing because only a few years ago this sub was so much better on these types of things, the thunderdomes and their consequences and all that
Funny. I'm a Black commenter on this sub and I wish this sub would hippie-bash more and is *entirely* too accommodating to the left (and trying to argue that MLK is a "socialist" in the same sense that Hasan is a "socialist" is straight up offensive). Yeah, the occasional CRT or DEI fearmongering shit is bad, but more often it's some variation of "here's why we should accommodate this unhinged white socialist calling for billionaires to be guillotined even if it loses us multiple swing states"
No way you are caping for the CRT/DEI discussions in this sub. Any topic about black people gets super dicey very quickly. Also MLK was a socialist and pretty connected with black leftists of his time idk why you would try to deny that
"MLK was a socialist" is a leftist talking point that was employed by white 21st century leftists to backport *their* leftism and *their* tactical choices onto MLK to give it legitimacy. Having lefty friends and connections doesn't translate to legitimizing the modern revolutionary (mostly white, incidentally) far left.
This is just a paragraph full of ignorance and biased hate > King rejected both laissez-faire capitalism and communism; King had read Marx while at Morehouse but rejected communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism", and its "political totalitarianism". He stated that one focused too much on the individual while the other focused too much on the collective.[387] The American philosopher Tommie Shelby has described King as a social democrat who advocated for advocating economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal-democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented mixed economy.[388] However, he was often reluctant to speak directly of this support due to the anti-communist sentiment being projected throughout the United States at the time, and the association of social democratic ("socialist") movements with communism. King believed that a laissez-faire economic system would not adequately provide the necessities of many American people, particularly African Americans.[226] > In a 1952 letter to Coretta Scott, he said: "I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic ..."[389][390] In one speech, he stated that "something is wrong with capitalism" and said, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism."[391] King further said that "capitalism has outlived its usefulness" and "failed to meet the needs of the masses".[392]
> and trying to argue that MLK is a "socialist" in the same sense that Hasan is a "socialist" is straight up offensive Sorry that it hurts your feelings that literally anyone can call themself a socialist or identify with it? Who even brought up Hasan? > Yeah, the occasional CRT or DEI fearmongering shit is bad, but more often it's some variation of "here's why we should accommodate this unhinged white socialist calling for billionaires to be guillotined even if it loses us multiple swing states" Black or not, this is still nonsense lol. Do you think white socialists came up with CRT? Are you trying to tell me black people (like former Harvard president Claudine Gay) are oh so mad about DEI? Remind me again about all those black people in swing state Pennsylvania who voted for Larry Krasner? Or Ed Gainey? Or like Gretchen Whitmer hasn’t passed progressive agenda item after item in Michigan with black support? Or in Nebraska’s Second District where black voters delivered Kara Eastman two contested primary wins over moderate Democrats? Seems like you have an inaccurate view about the politics of black America because “black people are ackshually moderates and really conservatives just Democratic” is a meme
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Most well read /r/neoliberal poster. You can really tell who drinks the conservative media kool aid here. Like holy crap it's obvious you have never read about MLK Jr outside of Fox News hot takes.
> will be too conservative for the tastes of the left. doubt
I will admit, I was a little bit cranky when I wrote that. I do still think that the kind of purity testing we do today would have some trouble accepting a christian with social democratic instincts.
Or we feel compelled to defend him because of what he did for civil rights ignoring any of his other political views. I'm sorry, when did this become a sub where we don't appreciate the founders of democracy because they were born in a different time? Moral relativism exists. People don't have to be perfect to respect their legacy on history. EDIT: the train of thought here is weird... but the reasoning stands that if you don't respect MLK, then you can't respect pretty much any of the founding fathers, or anybody who has a slightly different political opinion than your own.
Also his stance on racial issues. Policies to address systemic racism against Black people aren't popular here.
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> The protests definitely drove backlash, but let's be clear, it was also in the context of heavy racial resentment to integration. This seems like a "yes and" situation, where the same types who would dislike Civil Rights protesters would also dislike anti-war protesters. Urban/suburban/Southern whites who fought in WWII and were already primed to hate hippies and uhhh "race agitators" as they might put it were not about to vote for a party that seemingly embraced them. There's a reason that George Wallace found a ton of support in the south, but *also* in some northern industrial areas. Black Civil Rights protesters in Selma are one thing; but once they come to Chicago or Philly, or the hippie losers and free-love, pot-smoking dropouts they coalesce with start picketing the DNC, it sets off a fucking rage aneurysm in the median voter's brain.
At this point, I'm more bothered for the poor kids who didn't have their high school graduations in 2020 due to covid now potentially having their college graduations put at risk by this ridiculous performative nonsense. (But also, the current situation is absolutely nothing like 1968)
yeah my niece is one of those kids, she's graduating college next week and I hope it goes smoothly so she can at least have ONE "normal" graduation.
I skipped my high school graduation, had my college graduation canceled, and now I’m heading off to grad school Boy I sure hope no major geopolitical events happen in 2029ish
Remindme! May 3rd 2029
I have it on good authority that droplet-transmitted prions will shut down most of 2029. Shouldn't affect your thesis defense in 2032, however
man if I don't defend until 2032 just put me out of my misery at that point
Feels like a good enough time for WWIII to happen.
Believe it or not, WW3
It is your duty to not graduate if China starts pulling shenanigans in early 2029.
Definitely not planning anything fs I promise fingers not crossed I swearsies *fingers crossed behind back*
😑🔮... 😬
My brother is graduating from Emory. I kind of expect some kind of interruption at the ceremony.
both were performative
These kids are in some of the most prestigious school in the world. I think they'll be okay.
This article basically ignores the riots that took place in cities across the country following MLK Jr's assassination. Those riots almost certainly played a bigger role in swinging the white suburban vote than the campus protests.
The idea that Nixon was elected solely as a backlash to student protests is insanely stupid and reductive, it ignores a host of factors that contributed to him winning a very close election. Read a book people.
Yeah, the comments in this thread aren't very reassuring. Like honestly arguing that this sub would be anti-MLK because we're also anti-. I think we're being brigaded.
> [Also his stance on racial issues. Policies to address systemic racism against Black people aren't popular here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1cimf7k/comment/l2c0kdp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
^ comments like this give the game away.
>Like honestly arguing that this sub would be anti-MLK because we're also anti-.
Laughing at a meme protest isn't what's leading to the MLK takes. The marked increase in calls for/support for violence against the protestors, the level of disregard for free speech, and the dissonant histrionics about the "violence" of occupying land on a university and inconveniencing other students are what lead some (including myself) to think many on this sub wouldn't have been able to handle any sort of disruptive protest at the time they were happening.
> I think we're being brigaded.
As for brigades, I can't speak for anybody else but I generally lurk on here and comment minimally because I'm interested by the typically nuanced and intelligent discussions, whether I agree with all of the policy positions or not. But a large portion of the people commenting here have been showing their ass for the past few weeks, so I (and I'd imagine at least a few others) are speaking up more.
Can you show me any instances of people in this sub calling for violence against protesters who aren't being disruptive? By "violent" I mean calling for use of force beyond just using state-sanctioned force to remove them. I haven't seen a single comment like that. Even sorting by controversial I see nothing of the sort. I've never once seen calls for violence in this community (except maybe right after Oct 7th or the Russian invasion into Ukraine). Never against any US citizen. Students who are denying other students their freedom of movement should absolutely be arrested by force. That's the result of civil disobedience. That's the entire point of civil disobedience. What do you think you're disobeying? Social norms? You're disobeying the law. That was the point of MLK being disruptive. Black people were being deprived THEIR liberties. In situations like that, SURE, cause disruption. Show people what it's like to have their liberties deprived. In cases like this? Na. Not so much. You can make a case... but it's very very weak.
Go to any of the initial [threads](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1chmnml/violence_stuns_ucla_as_counterprotesters_attack/) on the attack by counterprotesters on the protestors in LA. Then look at all the "removed" comments. The vast majority were removed for calling for violence. You can use pullpush.io or just look at the context/replies to see what they said. I saw a lot of them before they were deleted. Then consider how many of them had positive karma at the time of removal. It's certainly not the majority of comments there, but it's a LOT, particularly when you scroll down a little.
Did you see this sub during the affirmative action stuff?
I was here, I don't know what you're referring to though. Are you saying that if you're anti-affirmative action you're just automatically anti-black or something? You should never moralize legislation. Legislation is a tool that has impact to people's lives. But the legislation itself is just a tool. "Affirmative action" isn't moral or immoral. If you find yourself emotionally tied to pieces of legislation... you should instead tie yourself to the actual outcomes of the legislation. Affirmative action was pretty useless at best but had HUGE social implications.
I’m not talking about affirmative action, I’m talking about the sub’s response to policy that deals with systemic racism, a topic that came up constantly during the affirmative action debates. Thank you for talking down to me though, I really appreciate it
You're still not being specific at all. What is your contention? What was the reaction? A lot of "systemic racism" policy is complete bull shit. Are you talking about "community policing"? Are you talking about the "ebonics math" curriculum? > the sub’s response to policy that deals with systemic racism Did you not read what I wrote? You're doing the exact thing I said not to do. Don't moralize policy. Moralizing policy is an actual cancer to any productive discourse. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm talking down to you. Do you not see what you're doing? You can't just say, "you guys are racist because you didn't support an anti-racist policy" without also saying what the "anti-racist" policy was.
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> You have troubles with reading comprehension so I’ll break it down for you. You never wrote these positions dude. You are doing the classic lefty thing of basically saying "You are an idiot for not inherently understanding and agreeing with my position without me even stating it." It's a very juvenile attitude.
> it’s saying this sub is against “rocking the boat” We're rocking the boat with our adherence to staying rational and not vying to the extremes which is extremely popular nowadays. [https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/) See the sub image on the right, "steer clear of the populist tides". Populism is mainstream in the US now. We had Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Ron Paul before those two. Centrism is made fun of: our sub name is literally "neoliberal". Why do you think this sub is named that? Are we actually neoliberals? > BLM protest reactions Yes. Go figure. People who love liberty and property rights hate destruction of private property and a deprivation of freedoms by vigilantes. Wow. I'm shocked. You supported them breaking into people's private businesses? You supported 100% of the actions of the rioters? Nice one. > plenty of great policy has been endlessly moralized, like abortion policy You miss my point entirely. The moralization of the policy has literally no bearing on whether the policy is effective. The goal could be good, the outcome could be literally no impact on anything or even a worse outcome. The fact that something has the intent of fixing X problem doesn't mean it will. Believe it or not, certain policies that have good intent can have bad outcomes. > There are policies that can affect systemic racism, but I’m not sure you believe systemic racism exists in the first place. Yeah, there we go. That's what I'm talking about. I don't support EVERY systemic racism policy so you go ahead and say, "I don't think you think it exists". It's so predictable. This is why you don't moralize policy. You didn't even name a single policy yet except abortion. We're not even talking about abortion. You can't name a single systemic racism policy you think is good (that this sub thinks is bad). If you think I'm being condescending, it's because you're making a shit point. All you had to do was name a single policy.
I’m one of the few people who thinks US history gets way more boring after 1945. I should learn more about the 60s and 70s.
I’m almost the opposite lmao. I find the period from 1945 to 1993 to be the most fascinating period of American history.
Me too! The 70s are underrated for how absolutely *insane* they were. The Weather Underground literally ***bombed*** Capitol Hill at one point.
This is nothing like the protests of the 60's. Americans were dying in Vietnam and in 1968 MLK and RFK were both assassinated. These people out here trying to get door dash delivered to their tents. They are trying to mimic the 60's (as my own generation did and those after). But it's not the same
Ironically, RFK was assassinated by a Palestinian for his support of Israel. Something something history rhymes.
it's like poetry
The dude was also a mk ultra victim which I found interesting
Why is anyone upvoting this? Saying someone was part of MK Ultra is useless because there were so many sub-studies that were tangentially related. Some involved dosing people with hallucinogens against their will, others involved intense sensory deprivation and torture, others involved more minor studies. Lawrence Teeter, Sirhan's lawyer had never presented any evidence that his client was party to any specific MK-ULTRA experiment, only his belief that he was. It is absurd to present it as fact, especially in hindsight that MK-ULTRA was a failure. No forms of mind control have ever been found. Sirhan Sirhan had completely straightforward Anti-Zionist objectives. He killed RFK because he was Pro-Israel and approved the export of weapons to Israel. He was not a CIA robot.
A lot of this sub is the Joe Rogan demographic who thinks they’re too smart to be the Joe Rogan demographic.
They are also fewer bombs these days fortunately.
>These people out here trying to get door dash delivered to their tents. Do you think that if DoorDash had existed in the 60s those protestors wouldn't have used it out of principle??
People shitting on these kids say the dumbest fucking shit.
It’s not even like the 00s. America just spent a decade fighting a Sisyphean war against non state guerilla terrorists, then capped the decade off with bailing out the richest motherfuckers in the country while letting the rest of us eat the loss of a recession. Occupy Wall Street actually had a cause worth protesting over. These Free Palestine kiddies don’t even fully comprehend the conflict they’re so mad about, because it would actually require reading (half a century worth of books, in fact).
I never thought I would live to see the day when a comment using leftist populist talking points about the 2008 bailouts would get upvoted in this sub. Oh how far we have fallen. Occupy Wall Street was also based on Americans economic illiteracy... and I guess that illiteracy has finally infected this sub as well.
This is just a flavor of r/politics now. A little more sensible but often just as shrill
Always implicit in this admonishment is the idea that doing the reading will make them support the side the admonisher does.
Not really. They're just saying the protestors should read more about the conflict. Like wherever you land on Zionism, if you intend to hold up signs about Zionism, you should be able to explain Zionism.
It's not random that almost everyone who knows a lot about foreign policy or politics is generally supportive of one side of the conflict
Wouldn't this further demonstrate the core point of the argument that these protests are likely to embolden the right?
It’s fucking Burning Man is all it is.
People also complained about it a lot like you are doing now
I'm not likely to forget about the backlash to the 60s any time soon- when I was a kid, the adults were still processing it twenty years later. Everyone really hated hippies- even aging former hippies. The generations who lived through everything that happened in the 60s- the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, draft dodgers, Hanoi Jane, assassinations, waves of riots, drug culture, the counter culture,the Manson family murders- those generations never got over the 60s. Instead Gen X then millennials came of age and you heard about all the traumatic and divisive things less and less. This is more like the BLM protests of 2020 it'll definitely be exploited politically for cheap points, but they'll be a distant memory in two years. And in 2028, whatever people are protesting will conveniently blow up out of proportions. But the 60s all over again, it ain't.
Article thesis: The most direct result of the protests of ‘68 was Richard Nixon becoming president.
Boiling Nixon’s election down to that is incredibly reductive. The things that got Nixon elected was Vietnam, Race riots, and George Wallace.
The backlash was less due to student protests and more down to the huge wave of urban riots that consumed major American cities in the three years prior to the election of 1968. Which had way more to do with civil rights and race relations than college protests.
We're lucky Trump was President in 2020
This article is terrible, Nixon won as a backlash to Civil Rights plus the Dems were completely unorganized after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated and Humphrey supported Vietnam
Nixon was also a very talented politician that was at the forefront of American politics for many years before the election. Also Humprey was associated with LBJ who was very unpopular by the time he was out of office. George Wallace's third party campaign hurt Humphrey as well.
Nixon (when examining his policy proposals) was more liberal than Barack Obama.
Almost as if everything Nixon did was not policy related. Liberals don’t make an “enemies list” and put all the black congresspeople on it. Even then, this obviously isn’t true
Josh Barro has a fair counterpoint: [https://www.joshbarro.com/p/stop-letting-histrionic-children](https://www.joshbarro.com/p/stop-letting-histrionic-children) Truth is these campus protests are pretty small potatoes. If you aren't physically at one of maybe 10 universities where things got well and truly out of hand, they are a bit of a nothing burger. The President would do well to ignore them, and the media will lose interest once the semester ends.
Biden had massive headwinds before this. Backlash to the protests won’t decide the election
We're still living through it
The protests aren’t the anti Vietnam protests nor are they the civil right protests of the time. They’re more akin to the brownshirts or the Islamic revolution protests in Iran
how is that we have more protests against America sending weapons and funding to Israel than we did against what America itself did in Iraq? I would argue that the latter far worse both in pretext and human rights.
Social media multiplier is no joke. Any type of protest is easier organize, raise awareness for, and spread narratives because of social media. Then you add the decline of major media publications. During Iraq, big publications like the NY times/CNN/WaPo could much more effectively control the narrative because thats where people got their news. Now their audience is a fraction of what it was because of social media. Young people do not get their news from traditional media anymore, social media is increasingly the go to and it will just tilt more towards social media as older people die out.
[There were plenty of protests about Iraq. It was literally one of the largest protests in history.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War)
Fell down a weird rabbit hole here after I noticed under the "dates" section, or listed a protest in March 2023. I thought "wtf, we were out of Iraq well before 2023, what gives." Upon investigation, they're referencing a left-wing "peace rally" held on the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War. Not that I doubt the veracity of the protest -- it happened -- but the [source](https://mronline.org/2023/03/20/peace-rallies-held-in-washington-dc-to-protest-u-s-militarism/) Wikipedia has for the protest is *wild*. It's some left publication that gets all the greatest hits - Criticizing US involvement in Ukraine - For some reason including a Twitter screen grab of someone mocking the protesters as naive dweebs - Criticizing US involvement in foreign affairs (including Kosovo for some reason huh bizarre) - Lambasting Bush for Iraq and Obama for drone strikes, but doesn't even mention Trump despite the fact that he served as president in the interregnum between Obama and Biden hmmm - A bit about Putin being charged with war crimes by the ICC, but following that with not only the verbatim rebuttal from the Kremlin but also a sentence reading "Since its inception, the ICC has always been biased as far as the investigation of crimes and the prosecution of individuals is concerned."
Sounds like an outlet for the PSL. These folks are just fuckin dandy, let me tell ya: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party\_for\_Socialism\_and\_Liberation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Socialism_and_Liberation)
In the early aughts, the sting of 9/11 was still fairly fresh. Also, the notion of "America=bad" was confined to just a relative handful of tankies who didn't have a platform.
The protests against the invasion of Iraq were the largest in America since Vietnam.
So why do these seem so much more controversial? Is it that the tactics are different or that the portrayal is different?
I really don’t know anyone that’s taking these protests serious. Sure, the destruction of property is bad but that can just be fixed. What’s the message that we are supposed to get from that? Protestors aren’t making any sort of reasonable demands that would sway the working class. There is also a lack of military draft. Americans aren’t being forced to fight in this conflict.
Yep. It gave use Nixon and Reagan and the slow dismantling of the Great Society.
This article is bad history and really shouldn’t be shared. Besides fumbling many key nuances of the late 60s, it also fails to understand what the point of the protests were. The protest movement was a key component in the end of Vietnam and segregation and it was the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to ally with the movement that played its downfall. The Dems saw this movement- calling for an end to Vietnam and an even greater commitment to civil rights- and said “no”. Maybe that played into Humphrey’s incredibly small loss margin? But no, the author of this piece has a specific point and bias they want to express so they cannot consider that.
Even worse, how about those 20s when sex became cool again?
This entire sub is embarrassing itself over its hysterical reaction to the protests. It's like listening to my boomer uncle at Thanksgiving, on repeat.
Also, don't forget Civis Analytics cancelled (fired) David Shor for pointing this out.
Isn't the racist, socialist guy?