Listen, Liberals!

Let's have a short talk about liberalism.

[felipejestison]

Having dialogue with liberals/neoliberals can get very frustrating. Having them ask me "what if someone deserves to be rich" everytime is just tiring; it just makes me want to not bring up politics sometimes😅

[AutonomousVoice]

"The state as an institution is designed to protect and enforce oppressive class relations such as that of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, not erode them. Allowing the state to continue to exist will not assist in dissolving such relations, only in perpetuating them in new and equally destructive forms . Without the state, such classes will be unable to enforce their will on the populous, and thus will not be able to continue their existence." - Nestor Makhno.

[SteppefordWife]

When you said no student of history could buy into liberalism that immediately reminded me of my mate who is literally a History student who graduated last year. His focus was mainly on the cold war, so depending on what documents he studied and where they were derived from it may actually not be surprising at all why he still wholeheartedly believes that Liberalism and capitalism are great, an end-game and all we need to do is sit down and chat things out. It took quite a few weeks of discussion and citing legal documentation and such to convince him that building more houses without also regulating (or abolishing) landlords and services such as airbnb would be ineffective at combating the housing crisis, since only already wealthy (and likely housed) individuals (i.e. not the people who need housing / are the demand for housing) would be the main demographic buying up newly built properties and having a monopoly over their distribution (through extortionate rent and artificially inflating housing costs despite construction in theory making supply meet demand) and thus perpetuating the housing crisis. He has way too much faith that our current pseudo-democratic system in the UK is not thoroughly dictated by pre-existing class imbalances of power.

[kenspiracy]

"mmmmf...just one more vote, we'll get em this time"

[unpredictableaxolotl]

My minimum case to a liberal is that if the liberal perspective is where we negotiate all the competing interests in society to find a reasonable balance, then we need a strong left to leverage against the demands of the right—otherwise we just slide rightward over time, little by little, and the system falls into dysfunction (like it has.) I think the major barrier to accepting that line of reasoning would be convincing the liberal that they don't represent the left, otherwise that seems like the kind of thing they'd be on board with. Not exactly a radicalizing message, but I think an acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the left might still be a productive outcome in a conversation with a staunch centrist.

[ThePathOfEudaimonia]

You were the one that made me sign up for Patreon and become a supporter for the first time.

Hopefully many others will follow, so that you can start doing this full-time. Thanks for all the work you are doing.

[r.w.bottorff]

Listening to your channel is a great way to get into a more discerning and critical frame of mind. Thank you, Anark!

[kevincika]

Just discovered your channel and i’m in love with it. You have so many insightful videos about anarchism and more. Keep going!!

I’m a 22 years old man from Albania, and an anarchist.

[jhespinosa]

A friend was doing the capitalism good, socialism bad using bias history and then use statistics. Even her "communism fail" argument to fail if you consider the change to be a paradigm shift (on the Khum sense) where statistic cannot be use since the evaluation criteria change.

[fauxbravo]

Just had my first run-in with a bunch of libs on Twitter the other day. I kind of mostly bowed out of arguing. But damn if they weren't condescending as hell.

[undertoner]

This is something I see myself sharing with a liberal friend at some point (probably soon)

[DarkPrject]

This video is cathartic, but probably not very good at persuading anyone. It's my experience, and scientific evidence bears this out, that you want to avoid coming across as antagonistic in any way to someone you wish to persuade, lest you trigger the defensiveness trap, and make them double down out of spite.

[ascii_]

while I do agree with everything said in this video I feel like the framing and delivery is not very effective. It would be very hard for any liberal to find this messaging persuasive

[terraqueo]

Thank you for this video. Just... Thank you.

[Dakota_Duncan]

The idea of inviting everyone to the table to discuss their beliefs and come to a consensus is laudable sounding. However, it operates under the premise that everyone invited to the table has reasonable ideas and is acting in good faith. As long as both of those things are true, it works, more or less. However, imagine someone who really wants to genocide ethnic minorities. Normally, someone like this would be barred from the table. However, if someone with this goal presents themselves as civilized, couches their beliefs in dog whistles and insular meme-laden terminology, creates the illusion that their beliefs are more popular than they are, and insists that every perspective needs to be heard out in the "free market place of ideas" in order to protect "free speech, " then such a dishonest actor could very easily smuggle horrific ideas into the discussion and hijack the process for their own benefit. And guess what. That's precisely what's happened over the last ten years in the West.

[otherperson]

Would love to see liberals here who disagree--and hear their reasons.

[pixdava]

Thanks for this! just found your channel and for a long time Ive been searching for critique's of liberal democracy...Please can you do more videos about the problems with democracy...could you comment on Plato and Aristotle thoughts about democracy eventually turning into tyranny?

[trentbundy]

I'd like to see a longer video on this topic, but geared toward radicals interested in persuading liberals and including more specific talking points.

Same with the "Listen, Conservatives" video.

It's hard for me to relate ideas to these folks in a digestible way. 31:38

[strike]

G'day Anark! I understand that this comment may be interpreted as late, but, I am of a socialist variety, however I'm willing to learn more about the Anarchist framework. Could you suggest some works for me to check out?
Also, I would like to add that I am a Labour voter in Britain, however, I hold resentment to the direction of the Labour Party in recent times.

Respect.
(PS, I early apologies for my lack of punctuation or grammar, I am extremely tired as I type this!)

[aylbdrmadison]

There are at least three completely different axises at play in politics. Not just one overly-simplified axis that is incapable of explaining how any government functions. One axis is left/right (socialism/capitalism). Another is (liberty/oppression). And another is (progress/status quo/reversion).

Here is another way of putting it..

1) Wealth distribution: left/right (socialism/capitalism).
2) Power structures: (freedom/oppression).
3) Social ideals: (progress/status quo/ reversion).

To further clarify the third category, progressives want progress (not afraid of their own species evolution), conservatives want to keep things as they are (most democrats are conservative now) and regressives want to drag society backwards (most republicans are now regressives; _make America great _*_again)._*