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SDL
I make socialist and progressive videos
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Sep 3 7 tweets 3 min read
New blogpost:

Socialists will overwhelmingly vote for Kamala Harris. 🧵 Image Most polls only let voters identify as "liberal", "moderate", or "conservative". To know how socialists will vote, that's worthless.

Last month, University of New Hampshire added "socialist" to their list.

About 90% of socialist likely voters will vote for Kamala in ME, NH, VT: Image
Jun 9 9 tweets 4 min read
The "American College of Pediatrics" (ACPeds) posted another report against trans healthcare.

You're going to hear a lot about ACPeds from social conservatives, like Fox News and Jimmy Dore.

Anyone who seriously cites the ACPeds is a hack. Thread: 🧵
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In 2002, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published a report documenting that gay & straight parents had similar outcomes for their children.

Conservatives got pissed. They created the "American College of Pediatrics" (ACPeds) to oppose gay marriage and gay adoption. Image
May 17 5 tweets 3 min read
This shit drives me up the wall:

Both anti-electoral leftists AND anti-leftist contrarians like Wu ignore that progressives in blue states have created public health insurance options!

2 already have them (WA CO) and 4 passed laws authorizing them (NV ME MN NM). Image Progressives and leftists didn't "stop thinking about universal healthcare" -- in half a dozen states, we took the first step toward UHC in half a century!

Come on, man!

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May 2 4 tweets 2 min read
New article: 🧵

I am pleased to release a working version of my "Members of Leftist Organizations, 1848-2024" dataset.

It tells a story of the multiple rises & falls of the organized American left, spanning from social democrats to anarchists: Image This is the first time such data has ever been compiled.

That's because the topic is messy and enormous. The data spans 176 years and ~250 notable organizations, using 2600 estimates from 1100 sources.

How messy? Here's what the data looks like without the 170 smallest orgs: Image
Apr 3 15 tweets 7 min read
it's actually absurd that "Democrats don't pursue power, don't want to win, and don't have political beliefs" has somehow become Mainstream Leftist Thought

like, this idea just dissolves on contact with reality 🧵 Image This idea often comes up around abortion

"It's all political theater, Democrats just use abortion to win, so they will never protect it"

If true, why have literally all Dem-run states actively expanded reproductive rights?

Are people just unaware of this fact? 🧵 Image
Dec 7, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
tankies are *already* calling Guyana a US puppet state that is "provoking" Venezuelan invasion
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the "98%" figure is completely false -- currently, Guyana gets 50% of the profits and 2% of the revenue from the offshore drilling firms

Guyana is an extremely poor country with little leverage against megacorporations -- but it should fight for a better deal, as Brazil did! Image
Dec 3, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
James Somerton has outright deleted his Patreon

prior to deletion, James earned about $170,000 per year from 4,050 fans
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Less than an hour after the Hbomberguy video dropped, Somerton took a defensive tone:

Somerton posted that he was "shocked" to "come under target from a significantly larger creator".

Somerton also claimed that "nothing new" was "brought up in the video". Image
Nov 9, 2023 5 tweets 3 min read
very cool that people on here will push blatant lies to 2.4 million people, get corrected, and completely ignore that pushback
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This is frustrating for 2 reasons:

1st, the truth is very easy to find.

Haaretz maintains a list of the Israeli dead, 1149 long.
- 775 were civilians (67%)
- 374 were soldiers or cops (33%)

Indiscriminate killings of civilians, as in Re'im, is always a war crime. Image
Oct 16, 2023 8 tweets 4 min read
New blogpost:

Israel is ethnically cleansing Gaza. 🧵 Image In one week, Israel has forced 1 million Gazans from their homes -- 47% of the Gazan population.

500,000 of those displaced are children and teens.

When Serbia displaced 230,000 people, NATO bombed their military into shreds.

Israel is ethnically cleansing Gaza. 🧵
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Oct 7, 2023 6 tweets 3 min read
Hamas are terrorist morons. Don't cheer for them.

You will hear Israel supporters talk of "proportional response" and "the most moral military in the world". That's bullshit.

The IDF always responds disproportionately, always kills 10x and injures 100x more Palestinians. Evil. Image Violent conflicts like this WILL help Israeli reactionaries (pro-apartheid, pro-racism) like Netanyahu.

Getmansky and Zeitzoff 2014: constituencies within the rocket range of the Gaza Strip (and thus Hamas) causally became 2 to 6 pp more likely to vote for right-wing parties:
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Oct 5, 2023 22 tweets 8 min read
New blogpost:

On nearly every policy issue, Democratic states are substantially better than Republican states.

(but even Democratic strongholds fall far short of progressive goals, let alone socialist goals)

A thread of data: 🧵 Image Every time the Eternal Voting Discourse returns, I hear the same argument for leftists to vote 3rd party:

"Both parties are the same. Blue or red, nothing changes." (Example: See the meme below.)

That's wrong. And it's not even close.

Graphs below: 🧵 tinyurl.com/DemMoreProgRep
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Sep 14, 2023 15 tweets 6 min read
Every time the Eternal Voting Discourse returns, I hear the same argument for leftists to vote 3rd party:

"Both parties are the same. Blue or red, nothing changes."

That's wrong. Dems are better than Reps on nearly every issue, but fail progressive goals.

Graphs below:🧵 QUEER RIGHTS

The strongest leftist case for Democrats is on queer rights.

Take gender-affirming care for trans youth.

2/3 of Rep states have banned it in the last 2 years -- all of which are currently halted in courts.

1/2 of Dem states have legally protected it. 🧵 Image
Jun 18, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
Today in red-brown news:

The world's richest man (who loves theocrat DeSantis) and the world's largest podcaster (who part-owns a fascist coffee company) are promoting anti-vax nonsense.

In response, Jimmy Dore -- the Last True Socialist -- sides 100% with the anti-vaxxers. ImageImage Aside: It's very easy to broadly estimate the number of excess COVID deaths due to under-vaccination

Step 1: We know that vaxxed people had 5 to 15 times lower COVID death rates than unvaxxed people (graph below). Image
Jun 17, 2023 16 tweets 5 min read
the current Discourse on DSA Twitter: Is DSA in crisis?

Nearly all those who say "yes" then blame that crisis on a specific ideological failure of DSA that drove away the masses

DSA *is* slowly bleeding membership -- but the data suggests it's for mundane, mechanical reasons 🧵 First, let's start with the data.

Here's DSA's dues-paying membership since February 2020, with some important US events on the vertical lines:

(This data is taken from National Finance Committee graphs -- if you know of similar pre-2020 data, DM me!)🧵 Image
Jun 16, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
voting Discourse is back Image Democrats are centrists, liberals, progressives.

Republicans are theocrats, conservatives, libertarians.

Dems won't usher in socialist liberation.

But Dem state governments are currently defending abortion rights and trans rights.

That difference matters. ImageImage
Jun 8, 2023 18 tweets 6 min read
It's wild that a whole section of The Online Left thinks:

"You asked what socialist org I support? Nice try, FBI!"

As though they are running some hyper-militant underground terror cell, whose mere name would get them arrested.

A thread on actual fed infiltration: 🧵 ImageImage I give zero credence to "I gotta maintain hyper-secrecy on Twitter" for a simple reason:

The feds infiltrated *every single* important socialist organization.

Your org is not special. If your org matters, you should *already* assume it has informants. 🧵
Jun 2, 2023 6 tweets 3 min read
Do not bring a gun to Pride.

You will not be a hero. You are more likely to hurt yourself or others than to stop harm.

Do:
- Bring a charged phone.
- Bring a buddy.
- Bring a trauma kit.
- Learn how to Stop The Bleed. Image At minimum, bring a tourniquet, packing gauze, gloves, and marker.

Most 1st aid kits lack the first two. Check your supplies!

And check the dress code! Some events might not allow backpacks.

Watch an expert demonstrate Stop The Bleed techniques:
May 22, 2023 15 tweets 4 min read
it's genuinely absurd to see so many socialists just *tearing apart* Zoe for this fairly simple take, stated fairly inoffensively

also: the quote tweets nicely highlight some deeply flawed methods of thought that have gained credence with lefties 🧵 Image example: "Sure, theism is objectively wrong. But can we reject people's lived experiences?" Image
May 20, 2023 8 tweets 2 min read
Last note on guns. Consider three levels:

1. Micro: Personal ownership does NOT make you safer.

3. Macro: Higher social ownership does NOT reduce violence.

2. Meso: Medium-sized armed organizations *can* protect vulnerable communities. They *cannot* preserve all your rights. The evidence is very clear on 1 and 3.

At the macro level, more guns means more homicide.

At the micro level, more guns does not mean more safety.
May 20, 2023 13 tweets 5 min read
Defensive gun use is rare and doesn't reduce the likelihood of injury.

Higher gun ownership doesn't reduce rates of violence but does increase rates of murder.

Socialists should not deny these facts.

Evidence below. Thread: 🧵 ** Defensive gun use is rare. **

~2 in 5 American households have a gun. ~1 in 3 Americans are gun-owners themselves.

Yet among 4,357 victims of a crime (or attempted crime) at their home, just 1% reported using their gun in self-defense.

Hemenway Solnick 2015: Image
May 19, 2023 13 tweets 5 min read
I'm so tired of lefties promoting the idea that guns will keep you safe.

This braindead conservative self-defense bullshit -- but repackaged as ✨pro-trans leftist praxis✨ -- got 29,000 likes.

Among rich countries, we're the most-armed, most-incarcerated, and most-murdered. Image I've talked over and over again about how more guns don't mean more safety.

I'm not gonna recap that here, beyond the "America is not uniquely violent, it's just uniquely deadly" graph: Image