How far back did he send American leftist movements? Before him Jimmy Carter was talking about more programs, working with the USSR and socialism lite equivalents. Then Ronald Regan comes in, introduces crack, reignites the red scare and perma fucks all relationships with leftist ideology. To the point where the Democrats regressed hard and socialism would be a dirty word until the 2020s. Even then it’s still only used by the most radical mainstream politics.
Jimmy carter was an imperialist dog who should have been told to face the wall, I don’t care if democrats liberals are starting to demand more imperial super profits and gay drone pilots
Reagan didn’t do it, Capitalism failing to keep up socialism-lite in contradiction with the profit motives of the bourgeoisie did it.
It’s actually incredibly lucky for the US that they were able to weaponise oil prices against the USSR around the same time, because SocDem’ism was over either way and the West, in the continued Cold War, would have had to confront 2008 with an intact Communist world.
>>2667418
Then educate me. How did it die? Because it seems to fast that one minute, America is lighter on socialism then instantly regresses decades when the 80s happen. It was every institution too, something that didn’t happen during other eras of leftist regression where there would always be a couple of stubborn nails refusing to change
Reagan didn't kill the New Deal in America. Reagan didn't establish a half century of liberal hegemony.
That was Carter
The left set itself back by falling for every single bit of brazen COINTELPRO since the 1950s, abandoning materialism for smug elitist "good fucking person" and ostracizing the general working class for college students and HR professionals and complete rejection of pragmatism and playing the game for personal purity.
The Western Left went through the same declines everywhere, not just the US
Yankleft was already dead by the time of Reagan.
Reagan didn't destroy the American left, he saved it.
Prior to 1980 the US left was in shambles. Labor unions were thoroughly anticommunist, Maoists were busy killing themselves because of Dengist counterrevolution, stagflation had discredited social democracy and the student movements had collapsed. No one could agree on anything and no one had any real vision for social revolution.
Then along comes this charismatic rightoid named Ronald Reagan who sweeps the elections and seems to represent everything wrong with America. Anti-Reagan sentiment was like Trump Derangement Syndrome on steroids. The Popular Front with the Democrats is revived as leftists pour into the Rainbow Coalition for Jesse Jackson. Everyone in the mainstream media pours hate onto the Reagan administration. Communism and Marxism are forgotten as everything is reduced to anti-imperialism, anti-militarism and critical support for the Ayatollah, or the Taliban, or Noriega. The worst tendencies of the US left were cultivated in the 1980s, and only got worse after the USSR collapsed, discrediting socialism and leading to 15 years of post-left anarchist nonsense that only died in 2008.
>>2667514America was always this post-left anarchoretardation nonsense. America never had a proper left.
Carter was the reason soviets went into afghanistan. Zbignew was his nat sec advisor. Operation cyclone started in July of 79, soviets went in December.
Same this with gorbachev. It was andropov that laid the groundwork for gorby. If he did not die young, you would see him try to deng xiaoping the ussr.
>>2667412Reagan was about destroying communities. The most glaring example was the war on black/poor communities labeled the 'war on drugs'. While wall street types got a free pass for the powder form the poor got life for the rock. To his credit, he was a better actor as a politician than his time in hollywood. Fooled a lot of people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7GLJsclRi8 >>2667517Nope. Stalin's pop front killed the old US left. Deng killed the new US left. The post-left anarchism of the 90s only set in after everything else had been exhausted.
>>2667464It was Clinton tbh. Carter made the first tentative steps towards neoliberalism, Reagan accelerated it, Clinton crushed the remaining opposition within the Democratic party and cemented neoliberalism as the dominant ideology.
>>2667734That was part of the rejection of workers for college students tbqh. In the 60s it became apparent that most American workers were not of a revolutionary orientation and made no indication of ever becoming so. This led to a flurry of theorizing about why this was the case and what to do about it, and its from there that you get stuff like Third Worldism, Sakaism, Frankfurt school theories about the culture industry, etc. I think a lot of this stuff disfigured the left and led to major deviations from the elementary principles of Marxism, and it all happened because supposed Marxists couldn't see how the relative peace between classes of the postwar era was necessarily a transient and unsustainable phenomenon. They started looking for a new paradigm when all they had to do was wait for this transient compromise between labour and capital to inevitably collapse, which it now has. Unfortunately we're still haunted by the theorists of the 60s who scrambled to try to explain why there as no militant worker's movement in the imperial core.
>>2667913Always others to blame. Always.
>>2667913>post-left anarchism of the 90sThat's a good way of putting it. Disillusionment gave way to distraction and then the oversaturation of it. I can't recognize any real organization on "the left" now except in the contrived narratives and caricatures presented by the right. 'The right' only exists because it's easier to herd reactionaries and the only ideology is pwning the libs and "winning". I'm not sure what a centrist is but they like to 'both sides' everything to avoid critical thinking. I'm still trying to figure this out. Anyways..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vQaVIoEjOM >>2667517CPUSA was a major force on the US left in the 30s and 40s, but it was a combination of state repression and concessions to workers killed them in the 50s.
>inb4 the old CPUSA wasn't a "proper left"They were a Comintern party and took a lot of their positions based on advice or pressure from Moscow. There was nothing "anarcho" about them.
Bill Clinton was worse.
>>2667412Nixon ruined the american left, reagan just made it worst
>>2667412>more programs>socialism lite equivalentsWhich isn't Communism but social fascism. Critical support to Reagan.
>>2667412Well, the first thing I want to say is, "Mandate, my ass!"
Because it seems as though we've been convinced
That 26% of the registered voters–
Not even 26% of the American people
But 26% of the registered voters–
Form a mandate, or a landslide
21% voted for Skippy
And 3, 4% voted for somebody else
Who might have been running
But, oh yeah, I remember
In this year that we have now declared
The year from Shogun to Ray-Gun
I remember what I said about Ray-Gun…meant it
Acted like an actor…Hollyweird
Acted like a liberal
Acted like General Franco when he acted like Governor of California
Then he acted like a Republican
Then he acted like somebody was going to vote for him for President
And now we act like 26% of the registered voters is actually a mandate
We're all actors in this, I suppose
wow
>>2668638Lol my parents are largely apolitical and the only thing they know about Reagan is that they were able to become citizens because of him.
>>2667415Socdemism definitely got attenuated, but it more or less stayed in Europe to varying degrees. It's falling apart but it is only slowly getting chipped away over decades, whereas in the US the socdemism was already weak in the first place and it lasted much shorter, and it was dismantled much quicker.
>>2732829Were they cubans
>>2667514>Everyone in the mainstream media pours hate onto the Reagan administration.he was massively popular though, much more than trump to my knowledge. and the media was more respectful to him than trump, and it was only with trump that the illusion of the presidency being the bearer of majesty and dignity was still maintained. Trump thoroughly destroyed that myth
>>2733004>illusion of the presidency being the bearer of majesty and dignity was still maintainedsorry i mean that the illusion of its majesty began to totally degrade
Some of you really exagerates Jimmy Carter's progressiveness. He was a pro-civil rights evangelical who liked rock'n'roll and wanted strong family bonds and thriving smol businesses that's about it. He wasnt some ambitious geopol and domestic reformist.
He makes me think of RFK Jr a lot.
>>2667412Reagan didnt do anything.
>>2667412Woodrow Wilson knocked down the American left, FDR delivered the coup de grace. By Reagan the left was like the Weather Underground lol.
>>2733593More reasons why The Left shouldnt be defined by pro-immigration sentiment or POC worship imo. Reagan was as RW as they come but i often see revisionist history about him from leftlub being a dove because he gave citizenship to 1 trillion reactionary browns.
A racist LGBT activist is inherently more alligned to the lefts telos than a POC living in the west on the basis of him being a POC, as we saw again in Minneapolis during the ICE debacle.
>>2733595FDR just made it obsolete because he just did what we wouldve done.
>>2667412>How far back did he send American leftist movements?Stripping away socdem reforms was only good for the movement due to contradictions.
>>2667742based? i can't believe he said that unironically and just left it at that
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