#obviously context matters somewaht

[tanadrin]

I mean you're obviously right about milquetoast prog-ish liberalism being the correct ideology but wrong about political violence being bad. I want to see one of those 'radical centerists' blow up a building and for the Reichsbanner-Schwarz-Rot-Gold to start up again

I don't think milquetoast progressive liberalism is the correct ideology. I think that the milquetoast progressive liberals have consistently been on the wrong side of history in every revolution I've listened to Mike Duncan talk about, and in practice while they pay lip service to incremential reform, the fact that when push comes to shove they always side with not only the reactionaries but honest-to-goodness fascists (like the Whites in the Russian Civil War) is by itself pretty damning of liberalism-as-she-is-practiced.

Liberalism in the abstract is far superior to liberalism as it plays out in practice, but if you follow the principles of liberalism in the abstract to their logical conclusion you end up well to the left of liberalism as it functions historically. In other words, in order to really live up to the ideals of equality and liberty and fraternity in all that, you have to be willing to countenance land reform, limits on property rights, and a strong social safety net.

Now if you're anti-authoritarian in principle I think a lot of people just assume you're kind of on the left-liberal end of things because they don't see any space between Bernie Sanders and Lenin, but there are strong currents of libertarian and democratic leftism that get overlooked in political discourse because of the long shadow of Marxism-Leninism in the 20th century. In terms of praxis, I think I am most sympathetic to leftists that are willing to engage in electoral politics in addition to other kinds of political organization and activism (because if the Russian Revolution has taught us nothing, politics belongs to those who show up), while in terms of end goals I think the anarchists are the only ones who come remotely close to the kind of society I'd actually like to live in.

Political violence is strongly authoritarian in character, and repression and empire are its close companions. But I don't think destroying inanimate objects necessarily counts as violence!