Maybe not. He doesnt have to, he has people doing it for him.

Also, theres no guarantee he will succeed. Lots of these social strategies deployed by his admin, like the reaction to Charlie Kirk’s assassination, have backfired bigly.

But if we think about Trump as an individual divorced from like all of the backing of all the billionaires who openly or secretly back his agenda, then we are participating in exactly the kind of myopia that Trump elicits as the avatar and firebrand of much bigger interests. Just the example of project 2025, an agenda his admin has stuck pretty closely too, was developed by the Heritage foundation, a think tank that receives funding from wealthy super donors, mega corporations, christian conservative foundations, and on and on.

He doesnt have to play 5d chess, he just has to react to circumstances and varied interests, listen to people who advise him, and stay true to the actual basis of his power. Its not that hard to believe that a confirmed liar and manipulator to be a lying manipulator. If it has a certain theatrical flair, it just does that much more to confuse and mislead people.

Regular people play 5d chess all the time. It leads to mistakes, but Trump is accustomed to being immune to consequences. Don’t underestimate an enemy that presents a historic, urgent and deadly threat to like billions of people all over the world. You can believe he is personally dumb. That doesnt contradict the fact that this is a stunt, and that the stunt has an objective that it is working toward.

I’m not giving him credit. I’m accounting for the fact that people backing his admin this time are educated, serious, strategic, and tactical. This tactic probably got cooked up long before he even won. Trump initiated this meeting, and he behaved a certain way. If anything he over sold his position.

Even if Trump is a colossal moron, which I won’t deny out of hand, he is a populist, so it makes sense for him to try and blur the line between himself, a right-populist, and Mamdani, a left-populist. Trump will destroy Zohran’s admin and keep dressing like him for the bit.

Socialism isn’t a set of static policies, it is the real struggle for the liberation of all people from the oppression of a few. That struggle has taken many different forms and character throughout history. It isn’t a set of policy goals we suddenly reach and then we are socialist. The struggle never ends, even when we reach that point, we will still struggle to make sure the liberation we win doesn’t harden into some soulless bureaucracy that develops and sustains power for itself.

It is possible to look at Mamdani’s history as an organizer, his historic win for mayor and say that he is someone who is struggling for socialism. We can be critically supportive of him, and unfortunately there already is much to be critical about. But there is also much to support.

But categorical objectivism, which you are espousing, is not socialist either. Identity is not static, socialism defies categorization since it represents a historically contingent dynamic relation between the masses of people, the means of production, political power, cultural development, and much more. Anything that delivers verifiable, material, sustained improvement in the lives of the growing mass of people is socialist.

Zohran isnt even mayor yet and he has grown our movement by a considerable amount.

If Mamdani is able to deliver on any of his promises that will be a kind of socialism. But in order to be successful he will need support from not just New Yorkers but from all of us in the struggle, all over the country and the world.

Distilling socialism into a set of policies rather than an active practical movement of the working class organizing for our best interests commits the same dehumanizing contextualizing as any soulless neoliberal. Stop thinking statically and start thinking dynamically so you can join our movement rather than sitting on the sidelines poo-pooing actual progress.

He will, with the people in the know, the only people he might actually care about: rich assholes of the capitalist ruling class. The rest of us are all just rubes and fools to be manipulated and dispensed with.

It is a strategic calculation, and whether it will work or not has yet to be seen. But Trump has enough power that negative consequences don’t quite stick to him, especially when negative perception is drawn to him. The fact that this is so out of character for him should be a sign of how serious this is.

Our job as socialists and progressives is to wipe that fucking smile off his stupid orange face

Bingo

Because it has to look like socialism failed completely on its own, because of policy, or else it will create some sort of backlash. If socialism is seen to fail without public meddling from his admin then they can say, “well that’s socialism, it always fails,” the implication being on its own.

It also makes Mamdani look bad to certain crank liberals and certain crank radical leftists if Trump is seen approving of Mamdani. As a member of DSA I can’t overstate the effect of his win, we went from 80k to 85k members in one day.

Making socialism look bad to all those people in the middle to whose opinion of socialism and social democratic policies is starting to trend much more positive, has always been a top priority for the ruling capitalist class. If you’re seen fighting something that people think is good and practical, you look like a villain, which angers people into wanting to act.

Unfortunately a lot of those people in the middle are under the influence of illusions about capitalism. Maintaining those illusions is a multi-trillion dollar industry. Even when middle class people have positive opinions, they aren’t doing practical organizing. Basically they are more split on these issues than a lot of polling suggests. Keeping those people in a state where they will believe that the status quo is still better for them than the struggle for democratic socialism and liberation, is the ur-policy of the ruling class, and has been since FDR.

Trump is doing a bit, he knows the fix is in to destroy Mamdani, but doesn’t want to take the heat for it. He’s making it look like he really likes Zohran, but he knows Zohran’s life is about to become a living hell. Trump and his millionaire and billionaire allies in New York are planning to discredit socialism as an ideology, by making it look publicly like he had no hand in meddling with Mamdani’s administration.

Michael Parenti famously said, “Imperialism is when the poor people from a rich country, pay the rich people from a poor country.”

So I guess techno-nationalism is something like: when the rich people from a rich country pay the poor people from a poor country to trick the middle class of a rich country into hating everyone from every country

Pure psychopath shit.

That’s an interesting perspective and I see where you are coming from. But practicality is out the window with the Trump admin. Transparency is practical

Not every conversation, but every conversation between powerful individuals.

And maybe that’s an impractical standard, but the spirit of it is more liberating than letting corruption fester in the darkness.

You’re right, there are secret meetings between powerful individuals that should remain hidden from public knowledge

Totally because they are looking out for the billionaires, the people they are supposed to serve

human construct

Yeah but also human constructs are objectively real. When people say human construct in a way that relegates it lower than natural phenomenon, that is a condition of alienation. A building is a human construct, so is art, so is a computer, an industry, a society.

Rights are a social construct which are no less real than physically existing constructs. Money is a social construct, so is religion. In fact religion served the same function in feudal society that money does in capitalism.

Since all these things were created by humans, and humans are a part of nature, then human constructs are a part of nature. Rights develop as society develops, as we become more advanced. The right to healthcare didn’t exist before there was widely available doctors, hospitals and clinics to provide it, before modern medicine made it possible to heal many injuries and diseases. But now that the material basis for it exists, like any technology, it can be used to improve the lives of everyone or it can be used to oppress.

But both outcomes are the result of human activity.

I dig your conclusions, but I think that it becomes difficult to convince people when we ourselves are operating on a faulty basis. The reality of human alienation from nature is not an essential part of nature, it is the product of human activity. It took work to create it and it will take work to reverse it. Alienation is a condition of class rule.

But the real basis for it, which in our society is laws and culture underwritten by state violence, is not as permanent as the fact that it is the labor and time of all the workers that create what is actual. And if we want to change the conditions that alienate us from the rights and privileges that our labor creates, then we have to be able to reflect on reality as it is. We have to not just make mystified statements but really understand every step in the process of the logic that we will use to inform the actions needed for liberation.

Taking for granted our alienation as natural and not imposed, is a step in the logical process that informs our subjugation.

Did you just assume @hitlerball_lover1488’s gender?

we’re willing to die

I’ll just sit back

Willing to die in a seated position doesn’t cut it goofy

The 22nd amendment ratified in 1951?

No, you misunderstand me. When we define things purely objectively, especially language, then we are not dealing with reality. The meaning of words is inherently political, it is about power. This is obvious.

10 years ago, “woke” was a strictly leftist term. But the meaning has changed because of politics and power, it at least has a double meaning now. The fact is, reality isn’t purely objective, it is objective and subjective. Being overly objective is just as much an error as being overly subjective.

A relevant example is the history of Italy. Italy was divided until the risorgimento period in the 1800s. Previously it was all cut up into feudal city states that each had separate local dialects. It is a perfect study in how language and meaning spreads via political power. What is considered the Italian language is actually the Florentine dialect, since Florence served as the political capital of Italy after the unification. Political movements throughout this period focused on reactionary education to spread their political agendas. Millions of illiterate Italians were taught to read, write and speak the Florentine dialect.

Why do Americans speak English instead of Cherokee, Sioux, Catawba or Navajo? Domination and perpetuation of class interests embodied by settler colonists.

Its well understood that history is written by the winners, but the same is true for dictionaries.

I actually agree with you a lot more than a lot of the people arguing with and down voting you. If you look further down in the thread, where someone says that political rhetoric is more important than accuracy, I disagree with them. I am very concerned with keeping our analysis as close to real conditions as possible. But confusing reality with pure, static, positivist objectivity is just another form of idealism.

Same shit, different pedophile

Inaccuracy in political ideas creates confusion which fascists can use to seize power. What is needed is radical liberating education, not rhetoric. We don’t beat the oppressor by becoming like him.

Definitely a time and place for rhetoric, polemics, bending the stick. But its not across the board more important, its a tactic not a strategy