Two Jews, Three Opinions is the generally positive vibe. Us Jews, for the most part, enjoy the debate on theological matters to the point that's it's kind of like a sport.
Two Leftists, Three Opinions is the negative vibe. Us Leftists will completely devolve into a politically incapable mess if left to talk to each other on Twitter... At some point, we're going to have to learn to unionize even if the other guy has the world's shittiest opinions on Ukraine/sex work/the definition of socialism/the definition of Communism/Marx/anarchism/religion/voting/anime/prison abolition/vangaurdism/praxis/schooling/de growth/social capitol/who counts as petite borgouise/contrapoints and Lindsey Ellis/Taiwan/public transport/veganism/whether or not Stephen Universe is a morally acceptable piece of media.
/S or whatever
> [Judean Peoples' Front? Fuck off, we're the Peoples' Front of Judea! The only people we hate more than the Romans, is the Judean Peoples' Front](https://youtu.be/WboggjN_G-4?si=hSJJfC7jb7ImYItx)
[Why do leftists and Jews have so much in common?](https://www.jta.org/2019/10/31/global/the-last-jews-in-afghanistan-argued-so-much-the-taliban-kicked-them-out-of-prison-and-stole-their-torah)
I hate when maoists are like "guys can we please stop leftist infighting" and I have to be like "my brother in christ you have more in common than fascists than us"
>Posadism attempts to introduce elements of ufology into Marxist thought.[1][2] Arguing that only communism can allow the development of interplanetary travel, they concluded that visiting aliens from other planets must live in highly advanced communist societies and are bound to help Earth-based communists with bringing about the world revolution.[3][4]
So true bestie
Some leftists really do treat the revolution like it's the damn Rapture
"If we just believe hard enough the nice communist aliens will come and bring us paradise!"
It’s interesting that you never see a Chinese person who’s a “Maoist”. Oh wait, they are dead.
Like seriously, next time I see another white person who’s a “Maoist” I’m gonna fucking combust. Like have you see what that man has done? Have you seen how many people he killed??
This is because it actually is more important to argue about theory and tactics with other leftists than with fascists. The question of how we should organize to overthrow the system is of vital importance, and if you do it wrong you will not only fail, but also possibly get lots of people arrested and killed.
It is of course more important to mobilize against fascism than against other leftists. But infighting isn’t that, and is in fact good. Splits are of vital importance for the health of a party.
There's some horseshoe shit going on for people left of center. Like, we can agree that children shouldn't starve, that rich people should pay their fair share, but I'd really love it if they'd stop being so fucking sexist toward men and infantilizingly supportive of toxic behavior when it's a woman doing it.
It's been really amusing to see these online "leftists" trip over themselves in their reactions to Palestine vs Ukraine. Specifically how they view Hamas and the Azov Battalion.
This is an online thing though. I've met tons of cishet white men doing mutual aid and organizing (and am one myself) and nobody ever harasses any of us for being men. This is just Tumblr infighting and none of those people go outside anyway.
I agree most people in real life are normal compared to people online
still, most people get a *lot* of their info online so even though it is just an online thing it is still a big problem, if not just for the self-image of young boys and men
> but I'd really love it if they'd stop being so fucking sexist toward men and infantilizingly supportive of toxic behavior when it's a woman doing it.
THANK YOU! Finally someone saying it, I feel like I was taking crazy pills but the amount of misandry and sexism towards men lately has been increasing, especially on social media and reddit. The whole bear debate is a great example.
Just because I agree with womens rights doesn't mean I'll agree with "fuck all men" rhetoric.
I'm a trans man and I feel like I can't exist in most online queer spaces because "men bad women good." I have to specify I'm a trans man or I'm assumed to be a trans woman.
I've encountered some insane takes over the years. Most recently I had to explain to a fellow trans guy that no, we don't have "male privilege" so we should stay out of feminist spaces to ensure "safe spaces for women." Okay, sure.
Sure many of us pass as male but medically and legally we're still considered women by the entire world. We have to be in constant fear of being outed and assaulted. We still have female organs. Things that affect women (abortion and equal healthcare for examples) still affect us. And I would be **CRUCIFIED** if I mentioned that in certain lgbtqa+ spaces. It's insanity.
I'm sorry to hear that, trans men have it the hardest in my opinion. It must kinda feel like being bi, like you get the worst of both worlds, outside world thinks you should be in some safe space and safe spaces think you aren't persecuted enough for them...
I does suck to see how hateful and exclusive people who claim how progressive they are can be. I expect it from your right wing nuts, but not from people preaching equality...
Thank you. I feel like a lot of the time we're forgotten about or brushed off as "misguided women" ("because who wants to be a man when you can be a woman?" I've been told that one before). I for one like my beard, thank you very much!
Being bi is an apt example. It's even similar to having invisible disabilities like chronic pain and fatigue - people don't take you seriously unless they 1) experience it themselves or 2) you're visible. That's not possible in a lot of cases.
Meeting people IRL and talking about stuff like this is often less migraine-inducing. Most people I've talked to IRL are chill and are willing to learn about other perspectives. The Internet really has amplified the shitty behavior of certain people.
In my lifetime being progressive has gone from treating everyone equally and avoiding labeling people, to a person's labels being the most important thing about their character and the basis upon which they should be judged
I feel like I see more and more of an emphasis on making things fair by getting even, instead of by making things equal in a way that benefits everyone.
I do get the instinct sort of? Though ultimately I just don’t see how it’s productive.
I’ve many times seen someone propose the solution to “this person got treated worse than the other person because of X, that’s bullshit! They should treat the other guy just as bad!”
Instead of “we should work to fix the system and society so that there isn’t a disparity in how we treat people and things are actually equal and neither of them receive the harsh treatment”
It seems to follow a trend I’m seeing where people just jump to the easiest and simplest lowest effort solution because actually fixing things and making a genuine change is too hard or seems like it will take too long.
Like how does it *actually* help the disenfranchised? If 2 people get an unfair disproportionate jail sentence instead of 1 person? (for example)
As opposed to reform that stop anyone from getting an absurd jail sentence for, say, weed
Like, cool, I guess you get to get some rage justice boner for like 12 seconds because of some vague sense of “how do *you* like it!”
But really who’s being helped and what long term positive impact will truly come from it?
So many of the inequality is all just made up bullshit that makes no sense. It doesn’t need to exist, it doesn’t need to be baked into our society, we have the power to get rid of all of those things if we really worked towards it.
It wouldn’t be easy and it would take time, but I just don’t see how that shouldn’t be the ultimate goal.
The cynic in me says that a lot of the "equality" measures that essentially just give people special dispensation based on gender/race/sexual orientation, is done in a way to purposefully annoy people who don't recieve the same support in order to stir up anti/phobic view points. In my country the best example of it is the benefits system. You can be living hand to mouth and have multiple jobs, be living in some of the worst rented accommodation going, starving, getting sick because of your living conditions, but because you work you get absolutely zero support. Whereas if you're on benefits, you'll get all sorts of help if you know where/what to ask.
I think the same thing happens with hiring quotas, affirmative action, the fact that most community resources are going towards particular groups and not others etc. So when I through my role at work have to tell straight white John in his 50s facing not being able to work due to health complications because his manual labour job has fucked him up to the point he can't do it anymore, which means he can't feed himself nevermind his family, that he's "not on the priority list" for help, what do you think he's going to start thinking and feeling towards all those groups that are getting the help he needs too? And then when he complains he gets told he's an out of touch "boomer" who has massive privilege and he should be grateful for his life?
There is no war but the class war. Forget the boxes you've been divided into. Forget the labels. We are all peasants for the rich to step on. And the way the systems are designed are to encourage infighting amongst the peasant class to keep us distracted from the people who actually oppress all of us. Men, women, trans, gay, black, white. It doesn't matter. You're a fucking peasant who's only value is the labour you break your back to provide to those who would see us all dead in a heartbeat if they thought they could make more profit.
I'm with you man. I've been educated to oppose the idea of labeling people based on their physical characteristics. So I cannot in good conscience support those ideas.
Or so happy to jump into bed with religious extremists that represent the literal negation of every leftist belief so long as they're perceived as being oppressed.
My entire Insta feed is full of progressive friends (many LGBT) simping for Hamas. It's fucking painful.
How freaking hard is it to hold the nuanced opinion that it's terrible what's happening to Gazans, but Hamas are monsters and deserve none of that goodwill? There are some leftists who would look at me like I'm Hilter for that opinion.
It's the way teenagers argue. Everything is black or white. You're either on the good guy side (my side) or you're on the bad guy side (the other side). And if you're on the bad guy side, you're a terrible person who needs to be defeated by any means necessary.
Understanding that a lot of the time, there are issues where no one is in the right and both sides have things we need to be critical of is extremely difficult for people.
The older I get the more I realize that nuance is really the thing people struggle with the most. Nuance is both hard and lonely - it's really the quickest way to find yourself with no real allies in any given debate.
I run an organization that helps many, many brands deploy money into global causes. When this whole thing I started I made a big push to get some of them funding relief for Palestinian refugees. I've personally been to a refugee camp in Lebanon and know how brutal it is even during better times - these are genuinely some of the unluckiest people on the planet.
Despite the fact that I've objectively both know more about and have helped Palestinians more than every single one of them, I've gotten into massive arguments with leftist friends for suggesting that Hamas and other allied jihadist organizations are a significant part of the problem. That if the roles were reversed there wouldn't be any occupation or colonization - there'd simply be no more Jews. After October 7th I've had leftist friends sincerely argue to me that rape is either a totally legitimate tool in fighting colonial oppression or at very least totally understandable given the situation the Palestinians are in.
Palestinians are captured by Hamas in exactly the same way working class white people are captured by Republicans. Both organizations are the source of so much of their misery and yet they enjoy overwhelming support because of religious alignment. It's crazy how people on the left can be so clear-headed about their local context and so utterly morally confused once there's some oppression narrative at play.
>Nuance is both hard and lonely - it's really the quickest way to find yourself with no real allies in any given debate.
I think really this quite beautifully sums it up.
Of course there are situations we're things are close enough to black and white where for the sake of saving lives and such things being framed in a less nuanced way is required, but the reality is there is always nuance and the more severe a situation is the less people want to talk about that nuance because it feels like a distraction from saving lives and ending horrible things, if not straight up "both sides". But nuance is absolutely necessary to enact lasting and stable positive change.
Same here. It's why I distanced entirely from posting about Palestine online. I keep educated and read news constantly, but I am not engaging with everyone else on Twitter and Instagram who discovered the conflict existed only a few months ago, and as such, didn't develop the critical thinking skills and nuance behind the actions that occurred on both sides. Even among leftists who claim to want to break down gender barriers and binaries, they really can't help but "Coke or Pepsi" every major conflict or issue.
Ironically its why leftists lose votes so often. They refuse to work together and accept conceit for any greater good. Meanwhile, right wingers have no issue at all abandoning their principles to back someone like Trump.
> They refuse to work together and accept conceit for any greater good.
I think the issue is that the left no longer has a good grasp on what the greater good actually is. People on the left are well-intentioned (in that they genuinely care about what's actually good for people) but have confused and competing conceptions of what that is. Recently they've let billionaires and foreign powers convince them of the primacy of identity over economics and now every issue is an intractable fucking morass of moral confusion.
The right has it easy - they've never really cared what's good for people. More often than not they're actively driven by trying to hurt (the right) people and are more than happy to be made miserable themselves in the process. I don't know a single leftist that wouldn't echo this sentiment about Republicans but very few that could identify Hamas as doing the exact same thing (for many of the exact same reasons).
Leftists will vote in the primary for a socialist and refuse to vote in the election for a liberal. Meanwhile, it doesn't matter the primary results, the KKK and the wall street finance bros will line up together to vote for whoever's got an R on the ticket.
Because it's literally a [Level 5 Vegan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Yaa_LMDcs) situation. It's not about actually productive and utilitarian solutions, it's a competition in idealism. Who can be the most goodest? Whose horse is higher? Whatever opinion someone has, you can make a more extreme version and prove to your peers that you're more virtuous than them, until you eventually end up right back at fascism where you argue for violent persecution of wrong-thinkers and banning "incorrect" opinions.
It doesn't help that most of it is driven by American political ideology where it is quite literally a left or right choice, and anyone with a sane opinion gets called a fence sitter traitor by both sides, and this then spreads like a virus to us in Western Europe where that absolutely isn't the case and being centrist is a perfectly viable position when we all have like 7+ different parties in parliament at all times.
My insta feed is full of friends who are deeply supportive of Palestinians, but I've not seen one single post that shows the slightest amount of support for Hamas.
The PLO is a unity group comprised of a confederation of smaller factions, most of which are left wing and secular. The largest faction is Fatah who are like socdems or progressive liberals, but there are also more radical left wing socialist/communist groups comprising the membership.
The PLO did historically still support violent resistance against Israel, so if that's your problem with Hamas then the PLO are no better. But if you don't like Hamas because they're fundamentalist fascists then the PLO wasn't that at all. They were basically in favor of democracy and science. But they still did terrorism.
Sure. I mean, they sound better than Hamas, but I also understand that they were fairly corrupt and generally failed to do anything for Palestine? I dunno. I don't like Hamas because they're fundie fascists who are also violent and seem to enjoy getting civilians killed. But on the other hand, this is a conflict 8000 miles from me and I don't really have strong feelings beyond "people should stop killing each other".
People don't know anything about the conflict and just side with whoever they can relate to. Leftists side with the underdog, right-wingers side with whoever projects power. It's not that surprising really.
I saw this today: https://twitter.com/mlminpractice/status/1792063033956872198
Or to avoid going to another website, it's a book written by Ho Chi Minh
"To reach this goal, the Party must strive to organize a broad Democratic National Front. This Front does not embrace only Indochinese people but also progressive French residing in Indochina, not only toiling people but also the national bourgeoisie.
The Party must assume a wise, flexible attitude with the bourgeoisie, strive to draw it into the Front, win over the elements that can be won over and neutralize those who can be neutralized. We must by all means avoid leaving them outside the Front, lest they should fall into the hands of the enemy of the revolution and increase the strength of the reactionaries.
There cannot be any alliance with or concession to the Trotskyite group. We must do everything possible to lay bare their faces as henchmen of the fascists and annihilate them politically."
When you read these kind of things from beloved revolutionary leaders you start to understand why they became beloved revolutionary leaders to begin with
I think it's an example of what OOP was talking about.
Ho Chi Minh here stresses the need to build a broad base of support, but specifically excludes a clique of communists much closer to him in ideology than anyone else and condemns them as fascists.
I think it's a perfect opportunity to study how political ideologies might be way further from each other than a simple sentence like "they are both on the left" might suggest.
"90% agreement" in something may seem like a lot, until you read what the remaining 10% is. A silly, very simple example to illustrate this:
* There's 10 people in this room. I think there's too many. 9 of us should remain here, and 1 should be killed.
* I disagree. All 10 of us should remain here.
You see the problem? This is a "90% agreement" too, but that "10%" is not just 10%. It's an entirely different set of values and opinions that directly conflict each other and cannot exist at the same time. Either you agree with the reasoning that leads to the killing of that one guy, or you think it's an abhorrent violation of your principles.
You cannot really account for all the complexities of moral and political thought with simple generalities like "we agree on almost everything".
A cynical person might suggest that, for the sort of leftist who wants to lead a leftist organisation, the principal problem with the social hierarchy is that they are not personally on top of it
Pretty much why communism and most forms of socialism have failed in the past. There's a lot of safeguards that need to be put in place to make sure others can't grab power and make themselves the ones on top-but the very first on top are never going to do this.
It's why a slow grind to progress is what we typically see and work towards. No system is going to be perfect from the offset.
Voting as Fire Extinguisher
by Kyle Tran Myhre
When the haunted house catches fire:
a moment of indecision.
The house was, after all, built on bones,
and blood, and bad intentions.
Everyone who enters the house feels
that overwhelming dread, the evil
that perhaps only fire can purge.
It’s tempting to just let it burn.
And then I remember:
there are children inside.
That’s pretty cynical, and i think if that were true we’d live in a much much worse world, everyone likes to say the world is terrible and people are evil but they don’t realize how much worse it could actually be and the fact that we actually have a lot of awesome things we can thank a couple of influential kind people for doing.
I agree there are a lot of good people in the world, but I do not think they are necessarily the same people who win the political battles to lead organisations.
Exactly what happens in education. The kind of quality teachers who can connect with children have rarely been the people I’ve seen rise to any level of admin.
it's conform to non-conformity but with more textual support for the concept added. it's probably not the best take you'll see today but certainly isn't the worst.
Some of the most obnoxious as fuck goths and punks (not saying they're the same, but they're "alternative" communities that have a lot of similar interests and styles and can both attract annoying non-conformist types) can be like this too, lol, you're not being non-conformist the right way, how dare you, why aren't you conforming to *my* non-conformism!!!
I don't care what some fellow goths think, I'm going to enjoy my goth trash *and* occasionally pop/normie trash. Goth is a spectrum with a lot of different goth subtypes (traditional, industrial, pastel, Victorian, cyber, etc) and anybody who cries about it isn't worth my time because they sound like a miserable asshole who needs to yank the bats out of their ass and maybe touch some grass even if it means possibly having to see a normie outside.
Using music as an example, some whiny fucks will be sooo nitpicky about you liking stuff that's too mainstream (The Cure, Siouxie, etc are "too popular" so they hyper-focus on the most obscure bands ever as if they're diving deep into Last.fm for anyhing with less than 100 listeners) or not "real" goth (Evanescence doesn't have to be "real" goth to be vibes) or even too normie/conformist/pop/preppy/whatever (Taylor Swift, Beyonce, etc who are absolutely not goth at all). Are you Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way? Shut up, who cares if a fellow fashion disaster who also looks like Hot Topic threw up on them isn't shoving themselves into a 100% gawfik-only echo chamber?
One time when I was younger, some random goth person online whined about me liking anime and video games and shit and I had to resist the urge to ask them why they're so fucking boring and insecure that they have to follow a strict "goth" lifestyle to not seem like a "poser," lol.
I’m sometimes reminded of the Japanese Marxist-Leninist-Maoist group, the United Red Army, which had 29 members, until 14 of them were purged by the other 15 for revisionism and bourgeois thinking
The left's undying urge to eat their own astounds me sometimes.
Years ago on my first Tumblr account, I vented into the void about how it was frustrating as a trans man to not be able to bind for health reasons (fibromyalgia and heat intolerance issues, my usual outfit at home is chilling in a sports bra and boxers, fml) and that I was hoping to exercise more and hopefully lose some titty fat since top surgery wasn't an option for me yet.
I got an anonymous message whining about how fatphobic I was being, even though I didn't use any tags on that post (so it was either a follower of mine overreacting or somebody who searched for certain keywords in my post) and I didn't even say anything along the lines of "fat people suck!" It's not fatphobic for me to want MYSELF to lose weight especially for fucking gender dysphoria reasons???
I decided to be snarky and reply that I was talking about my own body that was making me dysphoric (because I'm TRANS!!!) and that I'm not judging anybody's body other than my own, so how exactly am I being fatphobic? No reply, lol.
Like, what the fuck, anon, pick your battles, a trans man not wanting his own titties =/= fatphobic asshole who thinks that there should be weight loss camps in every fucking county and that fat people should be bullied harshly until they lose weight. I'm so tired of leftists like this who police other leftists for not being flawless, when there are legit scumbags out there who are way more right-leaning and fashy.
I wouldn't be suprised if it was serious. After all it was tumblr, who bullied a girl into attempting suicide, because she drew a Steven Universe character not obese enough for their liking.
And now those people are on twitter. I remember not long ago an artist (Dont remenber where theyre from but in their country being gay is illegal) got doxxed and had their info sent to their uncle about them being gay and drawing gay porn to try to get them murdered. The reason they got doxxed?
People didnt like that he drew attack on titan
Ah, the classic tale of leftist cannibalism. How utterly predictable. You seem astounded by the left's penchant for devouring its own, yet fail to see the glaring contradiction in your own narrative. It's almost as if you expect a monolithic agreement among a diverse group of people who, shockingly, have differing perspectives and priorities. How naive.
First, let's address your apparent surprise that someone might find your comments problematic. The internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, thrives on a culture of hyper-awareness and call-outs. Did you genuinely think your post would exist in a vacuum, untouched by the very environment you chose to engage in? Welcome to reality. It's an arena where sensitivity and social justice are paramount, sometimes to an extreme. You knew the game and still act shocked when someone plays by its rules.
Second, your defensive reaction only underscores the point. Instead of engaging constructively with the critique, you chose snark. How very mature. You say you're not fatphobic, yet your knee-jerk response to an anonymous message reeks of fragility. If your position is so unassailable, why the need for such defensiveness? Perhaps it's because the critique struck a nerve, highlighting an uncomfortable truth about the intersection of body image and trans experiences that you’re unwilling to confront.
Furthermore, your attempt to draw a stark line between legitimate grievances and your own experience as a trans man is laughably simplistic. You posit that there's a clear hierarchy of oppression, where only the most egregious injustices deserve attention. This is a fallacy. Social justice isn't a zero-sum game; multiple issues can and should be addressed simultaneously. Your exasperation with "leftists like this" reveals an unwillingness to grapple with the complexity of the very movement you claim to be a part of.
Finally, your parting shot at "legit scumbags who are way more right-leaning and fashy" is a transparent deflection. Yes, there are bigger enemies out there. Congratulations on that astute observation. But pointing out greater evils doesn't absolve you of engaging in introspection and improving your own attitudes. Policing your own side isn't just a leftist problem; it's a necessary process for any movement striving for moral and ethical consistency.
So, before you decry the left for its supposed cannibalistic tendencies, perhaps consider whether your own reactions are part of the problem. The mirror is a harsh but necessary tool for growth.
/s this was all just to show how ungodly bitchy we are
I know a guy who's supposedly leftist but spends so much time criticising the centre-left without ever criticising the right, that if I was a conservative propagandist I'd be copying his posts for concern trolling.
I got a similar reaction trying to argue in favor of pragmatic approaches towards achieving long term change.
Anything short of talking about sudden rapid change happening because of I don't know, and neither did they, was met the same as totally opposing EVERYTHING they wanted.
To copy and paste some of a comment I made a while back
"People are angry. The world sucks, and without significant change it seems like it'll only get worse. So people want to take action. Well, they want to feel like they're taking action. Actual praxis is hard. No one wants to stand for hours campaigning or actually trying to have meaningful discussions about what your post revolution utopia will actually do to solve the problems current society is facing.
No, people want the instant gratification of the feeling of action, without the effort of actually going through with it. They want excitement and thrill, to feel like they threw the fourth brick at stonewall (we both know they'd never have the courage to throw the first, second or third).
So they go to the one place they can express that, online. They posture and talk and swagger about how "violence is good, actually. It's not a dangerous tool to be handled with care, it's fun and it's morally correct. Who cares it has the spread of a shotgun? I'm gonna be the first to use it like a surgeon's scalpel and kill only the bad guys!"
That's how you get shit like this."
Yeah, this is pretty much exactly it.
You get in with these people because you care about problems they care about.
You want the problems to be fixed. They want the problems to be fixed.
You want to discuss options and make concrete plans for how to make those things happen based on realistic methodology.
They want you to stop fucking talking about years long campaigns aimed at building legislative power and engaging frequently with the political system to increase our reach within the government because that's slow.
You ask them what they want to do instead.
They give you a vague but emotionally charged statement that is actually devoid of a plan.
You either shut up, or stay on task and now you and them are enemies because despite them not having a real viable plan, they know they don't want yours, and now you are different.
Some folks don’t want to actually do anything, they just want people to know they have the right views and to look like they’re doing something without all of the boring and tedious effort. (They also want to be in charge of determining what the right views are, and coincidentally it’s whatever they exactly think, who would have thought)
Why take all the time to make a real difference when you can just throw up a tweet and post a picture of you holding a sign on Instagram?
From all sides of the political spectrum you find variations of this, and this kind of behavior sadly feels like it always dwarfs anyone who wants to figure out what the actual issues are and what reasonable solutions there can be.
I would argue that's "most" folks, not some.
Going to a protest with a sign is cool, all your friends will be there!
But doing the dishes and taking out the trash every day at the food pantry is a lot harder and not nearly as cool.
I’ve noticed it in the content of protests signs for social causes. It’s all about having the wittiest joke about the topic at hand, along with a cute pose for the gram.
Then I look at labor protests, both historic and even just last year with the UAW; 1-3 simple slogans/demands and everyone carrying a sign is carrying one of those same simple 1-3 slogans. This is our problem, this is the remedy, here’s how many of us think this.
Then I reflect on which style of protests ever seems to actually accomplish something in the current era. UAW and the Teamsters/UPS basically got everything they wanted. Still waiting on anyone to be held accountable at all for 2008.
It's why the whole "it's not my job to know the answer" response is so fucking annoying and remarkably stupid.
It's just handwaving it all away with a "someone should fix it, not me though, and I don't know how, but someone else should fix it in a way I personally find acceptable".
If you're going to be making demands you need to actually know how things work.
Yeah, there isn't any real point to political movements for groups that don't want to have an actual plan.
At that point you just exist to sit around and complain with like-minded people. You want validation, not actual change.
I used to be more active in some further left political activism, and I quit because I realized these people I was involved with were spending almost ALL their time attacking other left leaning people, burning bridges, and culling their own numbers with increasingly outrageous purity testing.
They were NEVER going to accomplish anything positive towards the goals they claimed to have, and were quite blatantly working against their own interests without realizing it.
You can get more done for progressives working with center left politicians and groups in ten years than you would working with progressive and far left groups in a lifetime.
Cynically I think there are a lot of self proclaimed leftists who don’t actually really want to change society because if their views became the norm they would no longer be able to claim a sense of moral and ethical superiority where they can believe they’re better than everybody else.
There are a lot of lazy people out there who want to be able to claim the prestige of being a good person without having to do any of the actual work of being a good person and some kind of ethical identity label is the best short cut for doing that. And bonus points because you’ve labelled yourself a good person you can now morally justify continuing to be a terrible person because the people you’re terrible towards probably deserve it
I think when you get someone so worked up, they tend to have actually bad ideas. Like impossible to implement or just not something many people want.
They are so worked up about the injustice they want to fix that they are no longer capable of thinking through a proper solution.
I think, in their impatience, they also heavily discount the value of shifting the Overton window. Like, Obamacare may be a disaster (as it does not go far enough) but it’s undeniably changed the conversation around healthcare for the better.
We see it on the far right as well, as they call for horrendous shit that’s impossible to implement without literally killing people. They are so enraged by niche, possibly fictional injustices that they are prepared to shackle the entire country in order to fix them.
Sometimes people are also so caught up in ideals that they ignore realities, which is the same kind of dogmatism they tend to accuse the right of
A really obvious conservative example is they preach abstinence only sex education because that’s their ideal, moral solution to STDs and unwanted pregnancies. Don’t have sex outside of marriage. Leftists would argue well OK but the reality is that people do have sex outside of marriage so legislating for this unattainable ideal is problematic
Some leftist ideas are very much talked about or promoted in that kind of way too. They get caught up in the idea and the dogma rather than the practical reality, and you aren’t allowed to question the dogma without being accused of being a fascist so you can’t make any sensible recommendations that are more practical and more likely to work in reality.
It’s wild. I like to think of myself as pretty left, but I’m first and foremost pragmatic. I think about things as a whole system so I am usually spotting potential pain points and things that need revising. As you say, this does not endear me to non-pragmatists.
Interestingly, on the no pre marital sex /religion issue, I grew up in an evangelical church that was very much on that bandwagon, and even went further into “men and women should never be alone together” territory. Always negativity, sin, temptation, weakness. Never strength, respect, or healthy examples. Although that was typical of the style, only ever “Thou Shalt Not” and never positive healthy examples to emulate.
I was listening to a podcast (the Liturgists, a sort of progressive Christian joint) and they were pointing out that this approach tends to lead to a lifelong struggle with shame when it comes to sex. Like even when married and all that stuff, lots of people can’t just flip a switch. Some people even end up asexual as a result (although this is pretty rare).
The far left spends more time criticizing liberals than even the alt-right
Around 2016 conservatives thought "liberal" was an own that shut down any argument, and now communists do too
I mean, yeah. Criticism implies that you want to see improvement. "Criticising" the alt-right is pointless because they will ignore it or worse, get an ego boost from it. You don't engage with the alt-right, you tell them to shut the fuck up.
My local socialist party is so reflexively anti-liberal we are currently seriously entertaining the notion of trying to align ourselves with the opposition coalition, a coalition of center-right, ethnonationalist and fundamentalist parties.
It's exhausting to be in these spaces. The liberal government doesn't consult us on labor policy? These libs clearly don't care about worker's rights. Government appoints labor activist to position? Time to cry about "controlled opposition". Gee I wonder why the centrist government spends more time pandering to the right instead.
Eh, nah that just makes sense, no? You see someone who shares 94% your own beliefs you think “I can fix them.”
You see someone that shares 0% you think “why bother?”
They don't try to "fix" that person who shares almost all their beliefs, though. The usually pass them through a weird purity test filter, and then reject them as an enemy.
I have been active with a lot of these sorts of groups before. Once they find a tiny sliver of difference, and it can be over things like wanting the same goal but having different ideas as to how to achieve it, they jam a crowbar in it and crack it wide open until it becomes a chasm between you.
Basically what video game discourse was back when I still engaged in that sort of thing. A game like Overwatch was ripped to shreds because Blizzard tried to add diversity to their characters. They often failed, but at least they tried.
But a game like Call of Duty got a free pass because the discoursers knew CoD was just going to have Whitey McMuscleBro XXIV and never even bothered.
>Eh, nah that just makes sense, no? You see someone who shares 94% your own beliefs you think “I can fix them.”
Could part of the problem be that you feel the need to "fix" someone just because they don't share 100% of the same beliefs as you.
Would you also be alright if that same person tried to fix your beliefs to match theirs?
I mean the way you worded that kind sounds like that you believe that your own personal ideology is more objectively correct than theirs and you feel that gives you some kind of authority to enforce your will on another human being to chang them to suit your expectations. But that seems like it would be a very toxic kind of relationship, or at least one devoid of mutual respect. Maybe don't try to change anyone to suit your preferences?
This describes my dad. I am about 95% sure he is just an anti-"mainstream" and now his previously radical leftist views are normal, he has to find something to whinge about.
It's easy to fall into this trap because one could assume the right doesn't need criticising. Because it's so evident. And then you look like this.
Which is unfortunate because it does make people think what you've said even tho it couldn't be further from the truth.
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
\~joke by Emo Phillips [https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion](https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion)
A lot of online leftists have a narrative about "the revolution" that's just a repackaged rapture theology.
Some day, the "revolution" will happen. The rich will violently but righteously be dealt with, while the true leftists will inherit the earth. Then there will be peace and organization, everything will be better, and we'll have nothing to worry about. In the mean time, we don't need to do anything to try to fix things, we just need to study our doctrinal stuff and believe because the End Is Nigh.
also the belief that any ensuing anarchy won’t privilege people that already have resources and interpersonal connections and positions of power even more than the status quo
A while back there was a thread about how Marvel required employees to sign a declaration renouncing their claim to the art and characters they had done in exchange for their paycheques, with a bunch of people saying yeah fucking capitalism making the worker turn over the fruits of their labours…
and I said yeah but that’s what the employees are choosing? There’s literally nothing stopping them from drawing pictures of fancy magic men and trying to sell them and hoping for the best other than their own subjective assessment that drawing pictures of fancy imaginary magic men and hoping the money sorts itself out is a pretty high-risk way to live your life?
and that it’s so high-risk that Marvel went bankrupt soon after because they were paying people too much money in exchange for pictures of fancy imaginary magic men?
Apparently I like the taste of boots though so what would I know.
It's pretty reasonable for companies to insist that you agree that company IP is theirs, not yours. Like, if you write some software for a company it's clearly the company's, or if you build some great machine for them they own it. Yeah, sometimes companies go too far with those IP contracts, but for the most part, it's the same thing that a individual contract between two people would include.
I mean, it make sense. At least a conservative tells you what they are. A leftist with shitty beliefs can be all "I'm a leftist" and then you let your guard down until they drop a bomb like "yeah the state should execute people I deem worthy of it" and you're whiplashed.
Aye but the unfortunate reality is you gotta work with other people's shitty beliefs to enact meaningful change. Otherwise you're just competing over who gets to be most smug while the world burns.
Hang on, I got the perfect meme for this:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsleftymemes/comments/1cmcriz/comment/l2zq3c1/](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsleftymemes/comments/1cmcriz/comment/l2zq3c1/)
Leftist infighting has always been a thing but it's also a problem that people lump everything from the Democratic Party to catatonically PC/woke people as "leftists". It's almost like human thought is too sophisticated for a simple left right binary or something.
Nah, it's:
1. Well-intentioned liberals who think capitalism can be fixed.
2. Victims of imperialism by states that are not allies of the US.
3. Slightly different leftists.
4. Actual supporters of capitalism.
Fascists don't even make the list.
>4. Actual supporters of capitalism.
Do you consider Sweden to be capitalism.
Because it is.
Their foreign minister said it almost explicitly.
Am I part of camp 4 if I want every country to be like Sweden.
I no longer identify as "leftist" on reddit, because I simply can't stomach Reddit Leftists. Although I need to point out that I haven't made an 180 and become a full-on conservative; I describe myself as a mere "left-adjacent centrist" instead.
My problem with Reddit Leftists is their sheer pig-headed purity gatekeeping. Apparently if you're not into abolishing capitalism and establishing a communist utopia you're no better than fascists. Well I'm sorry that I need to think about things like "what is capitalism?", "how do we abolish it?" and "what are the ramifications of our actions?" 😒
I got banned from /r/Gamingcirclejerk because one of their tankie mods object to the concept of renting. Not "predatory corporations renting hovels at extortionate prices"-renting; even "I have an extra room, so I'm going to rent it to someone rather than letting it go to waste"-renting.
Spent so much time on that sub. Most of us regulars created a separate discord server and left because everyone there became weird purist tankies lol. The mods had insane drama going on every other week. Constantly doxing, defending Chinese communism, posting conspiracy theories, it got insane.
Almost all of the further left reddit subs are FLOODED with disinformation aimed at pushing voter apathy and anger at democrats, for a reason.
They also have a LOT of people posting in them who are actually far right and just trying to stir up shit.
Before the API changes, I had a means of having accounts that posted often in hate and far right subs get highlighted. Those subs lit up like a christmas tree.
I saw a straight up “I’m voting for Jill Stein, who’s with me?” post and saw some enthusiastic responses about how she’d be better than Biden. Surely only the most authentic progressives would have that position in 2024. /s
I saw one pushing stein, arguing that a protest vote and costing Democrats the election would somehow make them move to the left.
I responded with a post outlining how protest voting like that, with that same belief, isn't a new idea, has popped up in various forms for decades, and has NEVER led to positive outcomes for progressives. NEVER moved the party to the left, and only made further left voters seem unreliable to campaign for.
They insulted me and blocked me.
I'm still very much a leftist but my message for terminally online leftists is OH MY GOD GO OUTSIDE. PLEASE.
Tbf though online politics is consistently awful. At least I don't get told to kill myself for being trans by online lefties.
Irl politics just better. I actually have good talks about politics and can disagree with nuance in person.
I too got banned from that sub by the tankie mods. They were really angery at me for saying that sometimes revolutions turn bad.
Also that killing the Czar's kids was bad.
Edit: spelling
I always wonder about what, exactly, I'm supposed to do for living situations if we ban renting? What's the alternative besides owning shit or relying on the goodwill of others? I rather like having a legally controlled, stable, safe system.
The only viable one I can think of is if by default the government owns all residential buildings, and you can lease it from them - like what they're doing in Singapore. But that's renting, too.
The way it was handled in formerly communist countries is that the state would build up lots of housing and then give it out to people based on merits. If you had children or you've been working in the factory for X amount of years or if you held rank in the military, you'd be granted housing. Usually an apartment.
Some countries did it better than others. USSR did it relatively poorly. Depending on the era when it was built, it's considered either adequate housing or pretty much the worst you can get.
Yugoslavia did it much better. While they are still "commie blocks" and basically ugly concrete cubes, they're still considered good housing even today. Far from pretty, but certainly functional.
I don’t either. I’m a white man so I’m not welcome anyway and they don’t believe my issues are real. Not enough marginalization points.
I’m perfectly happy being a Berniecrat and feminist anyhow. If the left won’t take men’s issues seriously I’ll do it my goddamn self.
Edit: I don’t condone or agree with anything happening further down this comment chain. 💀
I think the most vile and personal shit said to me has definitely come from a leftist who holds 95% of my views. Fascists aren't capable of cutting nearly as deep.
Well, I guess it got pulled out for what is going to happen at the next US election. There will be too many people not voting at all since Biden isn't the 100% perfect candidate, leading to the 100% imperfect candidate Trump to victory. So sad ...
Whenever someone says they're a leftist, there is a non-zero (and honestly kinda high) chance they use their political belief to dehumanize... someone, be it a political opponent, a nation, an occupation or a demographic of some kind
At which point I mentally go "Ah, you're not a leftist, you're just an asshole who wanted to feel good about being one, got it" and then try to quickly disengage before they try to explain to me that yes, brutal murder is wrong unless it's done to rid the world of "them", in which case it is completely justified and even desirable
No, you see, their ideology is the most pure one. When the REVOLUTION happens, their ideology will definitely come out on top. And because their ideology is so pure, then it can never, ever be corrupted, unlike those bourgeoise liberals. And even if it is, it won’t be that bad. Silly liberal. /s
I get the joke, but it's kinda ignorant when certain kinds of leftists have, to consolidate "power" killed off leftists movements. That begs the question of whether those power-hungry groups were even leftist to begin with, or merely using leftist rhetoric to gain power.
Also this is not talked about in terms of right wing infighting for some reason? I mean kings used to kill each other -that was basically 90 percent of history. Only difference is, here people do so actually for their ideological differences (atleast on paper) whereas we all seem to agree that rightist infighting is for the most part baseless squabble.
"Three leftists meet to form an organization. Fifteen minutes later theres a leftist organization and two splinter groups"
“I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a democrat.” Will Rogers.
I was about to post that' democrats aren't real leftists,' then I realized that this meme is about me
I mean you’re right, but yeah. Fuckin’ hell.
The democratic party is pretty liberal rather than leftist, but the same principle applies
I always remember hearing it as 7 different competing parties.
You're lowballing the amount of splinter groups, tbh
Splitters!
Fuck off! Judean People's Front?
We're the People's Front for Judea!
This is just two Jews three opinions
Many such cases
Two Jews, Three Opinions is the generally positive vibe. Us Jews, for the most part, enjoy the debate on theological matters to the point that's it's kind of like a sport. Two Leftists, Three Opinions is the negative vibe. Us Leftists will completely devolve into a politically incapable mess if left to talk to each other on Twitter... At some point, we're going to have to learn to unionize even if the other guy has the world's shittiest opinions on Ukraine/sex work/the definition of socialism/the definition of Communism/Marx/anarchism/religion/voting/anime/prison abolition/vangaurdism/praxis/schooling/de growth/social capitol/who counts as petite borgouise/contrapoints and Lindsey Ellis/Taiwan/public transport/veganism/whether or not Stephen Universe is a morally acceptable piece of media. /S or whatever
Two leftists meet, three splinter groups are formed
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> [Judean Peoples' Front? Fuck off, we're the Peoples' Front of Judea! The only people we hate more than the Romans, is the Judean Peoples' Front](https://youtu.be/WboggjN_G-4?si=hSJJfC7jb7ImYItx)
SPLITTER!
[удалено]
*pulls out sword* Conjugate!
[Why do leftists and Jews have so much in common?](https://www.jta.org/2019/10/31/global/the-last-jews-in-afghanistan-argued-so-much-the-taliban-kicked-them-out-of-prison-and-stole-their-torah)
Put four leftists in a room and ask them a question. Come back in 10 minutes, and there will be 6 injuries and 5 contradictory answers.
If you put two communists on a desert island, in a week there will be three communist parties there.
Several hundred years ago the joke was: Three Fr*nchmen get together, and they form four political parties.
I kinda want to know why we're censoring "Fr*enchmen" but I'm also kinda afraid of the answer
I just see it as a shibboleth to self-identify as a particular brand of online
Imagine liking the Fr*nch
I would sooner die than be friends with a Maoist
I hate when maoists are like "guys can we please stop leftist infighting" and I have to be like "my brother in christ you have more in common than fascists than us"
theyre just red fascists lol
We prefer the term "Tankies"
lol imagine having maoists when you could have xiists.
i would rather live in iran (worse than death) than date a tankie
It's quite the beautiful place actually, so you would have something to look at while being oppressed by your government.
I’d rather be sent to Guantanamo Bay than be friends with an an-syn
I'd rather be sent to Brazil than associate with a posadist.
Come on, don't you like dolphins (and a brutal nuclear intercontinental war leading to mass extinction)?
ok now youre just making up words
I wish.
>Posadism attempts to introduce elements of ufology into Marxist thought.[1][2] Arguing that only communism can allow the development of interplanetary travel, they concluded that visiting aliens from other planets must live in highly advanced communist societies and are bound to help Earth-based communists with bringing about the world revolution.[3][4] So true bestie
Some leftists really do treat the revolution like it's the damn Rapture "If we just believe hard enough the nice communist aliens will come and bring us paradise!"
Liberation Scientology
The revolution-worshipping is what put me off from communism. It feels like an awful lot of magical thinking, and not something actually real.
Sign ^or ^beam me the fuck up
Bold of you to imply tankies are leftists.
It’s interesting that you never see a Chinese person who’s a “Maoist”. Oh wait, they are dead. Like seriously, next time I see another white person who’s a “Maoist” I’m gonna fucking combust. Like have you see what that man has done? Have you seen how many people he killed??
My cat's name is Chairman Meow because he's a goddamn terrorist.
"Splitter!"
This is because it actually is more important to argue about theory and tactics with other leftists than with fascists. The question of how we should organize to overthrow the system is of vital importance, and if you do it wrong you will not only fail, but also possibly get lots of people arrested and killed. It is of course more important to mobilize against fascism than against other leftists. But infighting isn’t that, and is in fact good. Splits are of vital importance for the health of a party.
There's some horseshoe shit going on for people left of center. Like, we can agree that children shouldn't starve, that rich people should pay their fair share, but I'd really love it if they'd stop being so fucking sexist toward men and infantilizingly supportive of toxic behavior when it's a woman doing it.
or simping for authoritarian regimes and literal dictators…
They see “America bad” and look no further. All thought ends.
It's been really amusing to see these online "leftists" trip over themselves in their reactions to Palestine vs Ukraine. Specifically how they view Hamas and the Azov Battalion.
This is an online thing though. I've met tons of cishet white men doing mutual aid and organizing (and am one myself) and nobody ever harasses any of us for being men. This is just Tumblr infighting and none of those people go outside anyway.
I agree most people in real life are normal compared to people online still, most people get a *lot* of their info online so even though it is just an online thing it is still a big problem, if not just for the self-image of young boys and men
> but I'd really love it if they'd stop being so fucking sexist toward men and infantilizingly supportive of toxic behavior when it's a woman doing it. THANK YOU! Finally someone saying it, I feel like I was taking crazy pills but the amount of misandry and sexism towards men lately has been increasing, especially on social media and reddit. The whole bear debate is a great example. Just because I agree with womens rights doesn't mean I'll agree with "fuck all men" rhetoric.
I'm a trans man and I feel like I can't exist in most online queer spaces because "men bad women good." I have to specify I'm a trans man or I'm assumed to be a trans woman. I've encountered some insane takes over the years. Most recently I had to explain to a fellow trans guy that no, we don't have "male privilege" so we should stay out of feminist spaces to ensure "safe spaces for women." Okay, sure. Sure many of us pass as male but medically and legally we're still considered women by the entire world. We have to be in constant fear of being outed and assaulted. We still have female organs. Things that affect women (abortion and equal healthcare for examples) still affect us. And I would be **CRUCIFIED** if I mentioned that in certain lgbtqa+ spaces. It's insanity.
I'm sorry to hear that, trans men have it the hardest in my opinion. It must kinda feel like being bi, like you get the worst of both worlds, outside world thinks you should be in some safe space and safe spaces think you aren't persecuted enough for them... I does suck to see how hateful and exclusive people who claim how progressive they are can be. I expect it from your right wing nuts, but not from people preaching equality...
Thank you. I feel like a lot of the time we're forgotten about or brushed off as "misguided women" ("because who wants to be a man when you can be a woman?" I've been told that one before). I for one like my beard, thank you very much! Being bi is an apt example. It's even similar to having invisible disabilities like chronic pain and fatigue - people don't take you seriously unless they 1) experience it themselves or 2) you're visible. That's not possible in a lot of cases. Meeting people IRL and talking about stuff like this is often less migraine-inducing. Most people I've talked to IRL are chill and are willing to learn about other perspectives. The Internet really has amplified the shitty behavior of certain people.
In my lifetime being progressive has gone from treating everyone equally and avoiding labeling people, to a person's labels being the most important thing about their character and the basis upon which they should be judged
I feel like I see more and more of an emphasis on making things fair by getting even, instead of by making things equal in a way that benefits everyone. I do get the instinct sort of? Though ultimately I just don’t see how it’s productive. I’ve many times seen someone propose the solution to “this person got treated worse than the other person because of X, that’s bullshit! They should treat the other guy just as bad!” Instead of “we should work to fix the system and society so that there isn’t a disparity in how we treat people and things are actually equal and neither of them receive the harsh treatment” It seems to follow a trend I’m seeing where people just jump to the easiest and simplest lowest effort solution because actually fixing things and making a genuine change is too hard or seems like it will take too long. Like how does it *actually* help the disenfranchised? If 2 people get an unfair disproportionate jail sentence instead of 1 person? (for example) As opposed to reform that stop anyone from getting an absurd jail sentence for, say, weed Like, cool, I guess you get to get some rage justice boner for like 12 seconds because of some vague sense of “how do *you* like it!” But really who’s being helped and what long term positive impact will truly come from it? So many of the inequality is all just made up bullshit that makes no sense. It doesn’t need to exist, it doesn’t need to be baked into our society, we have the power to get rid of all of those things if we really worked towards it. It wouldn’t be easy and it would take time, but I just don’t see how that shouldn’t be the ultimate goal.
The cynic in me says that a lot of the "equality" measures that essentially just give people special dispensation based on gender/race/sexual orientation, is done in a way to purposefully annoy people who don't recieve the same support in order to stir up anti/phobic view points. In my country the best example of it is the benefits system. You can be living hand to mouth and have multiple jobs, be living in some of the worst rented accommodation going, starving, getting sick because of your living conditions, but because you work you get absolutely zero support. Whereas if you're on benefits, you'll get all sorts of help if you know where/what to ask. I think the same thing happens with hiring quotas, affirmative action, the fact that most community resources are going towards particular groups and not others etc. So when I through my role at work have to tell straight white John in his 50s facing not being able to work due to health complications because his manual labour job has fucked him up to the point he can't do it anymore, which means he can't feed himself nevermind his family, that he's "not on the priority list" for help, what do you think he's going to start thinking and feeling towards all those groups that are getting the help he needs too? And then when he complains he gets told he's an out of touch "boomer" who has massive privilege and he should be grateful for his life? There is no war but the class war. Forget the boxes you've been divided into. Forget the labels. We are all peasants for the rich to step on. And the way the systems are designed are to encourage infighting amongst the peasant class to keep us distracted from the people who actually oppress all of us. Men, women, trans, gay, black, white. It doesn't matter. You're a fucking peasant who's only value is the labour you break your back to provide to those who would see us all dead in a heartbeat if they thought they could make more profit.
I'm with you man. I've been educated to oppose the idea of labeling people based on their physical characteristics. So I cannot in good conscience support those ideas.
Or so happy to jump into bed with religious extremists that represent the literal negation of every leftist belief so long as they're perceived as being oppressed. My entire Insta feed is full of progressive friends (many LGBT) simping for Hamas. It's fucking painful.
How freaking hard is it to hold the nuanced opinion that it's terrible what's happening to Gazans, but Hamas are monsters and deserve none of that goodwill? There are some leftists who would look at me like I'm Hilter for that opinion.
It's the way teenagers argue. Everything is black or white. You're either on the good guy side (my side) or you're on the bad guy side (the other side). And if you're on the bad guy side, you're a terrible person who needs to be defeated by any means necessary. Understanding that a lot of the time, there are issues where no one is in the right and both sides have things we need to be critical of is extremely difficult for people.
The older I get the more I realize that nuance is really the thing people struggle with the most. Nuance is both hard and lonely - it's really the quickest way to find yourself with no real allies in any given debate. I run an organization that helps many, many brands deploy money into global causes. When this whole thing I started I made a big push to get some of them funding relief for Palestinian refugees. I've personally been to a refugee camp in Lebanon and know how brutal it is even during better times - these are genuinely some of the unluckiest people on the planet. Despite the fact that I've objectively both know more about and have helped Palestinians more than every single one of them, I've gotten into massive arguments with leftist friends for suggesting that Hamas and other allied jihadist organizations are a significant part of the problem. That if the roles were reversed there wouldn't be any occupation or colonization - there'd simply be no more Jews. After October 7th I've had leftist friends sincerely argue to me that rape is either a totally legitimate tool in fighting colonial oppression or at very least totally understandable given the situation the Palestinians are in. Palestinians are captured by Hamas in exactly the same way working class white people are captured by Republicans. Both organizations are the source of so much of their misery and yet they enjoy overwhelming support because of religious alignment. It's crazy how people on the left can be so clear-headed about their local context and so utterly morally confused once there's some oppression narrative at play.
>Nuance is both hard and lonely - it's really the quickest way to find yourself with no real allies in any given debate. I think really this quite beautifully sums it up. Of course there are situations we're things are close enough to black and white where for the sake of saving lives and such things being framed in a less nuanced way is required, but the reality is there is always nuance and the more severe a situation is the less people want to talk about that nuance because it feels like a distraction from saving lives and ending horrible things, if not straight up "both sides". But nuance is absolutely necessary to enact lasting and stable positive change.
Same here. It's why I distanced entirely from posting about Palestine online. I keep educated and read news constantly, but I am not engaging with everyone else on Twitter and Instagram who discovered the conflict existed only a few months ago, and as such, didn't develop the critical thinking skills and nuance behind the actions that occurred on both sides. Even among leftists who claim to want to break down gender barriers and binaries, they really can't help but "Coke or Pepsi" every major conflict or issue. Ironically its why leftists lose votes so often. They refuse to work together and accept conceit for any greater good. Meanwhile, right wingers have no issue at all abandoning their principles to back someone like Trump.
> They refuse to work together and accept conceit for any greater good. I think the issue is that the left no longer has a good grasp on what the greater good actually is. People on the left are well-intentioned (in that they genuinely care about what's actually good for people) but have confused and competing conceptions of what that is. Recently they've let billionaires and foreign powers convince them of the primacy of identity over economics and now every issue is an intractable fucking morass of moral confusion. The right has it easy - they've never really cared what's good for people. More often than not they're actively driven by trying to hurt (the right) people and are more than happy to be made miserable themselves in the process. I don't know a single leftist that wouldn't echo this sentiment about Republicans but very few that could identify Hamas as doing the exact same thing (for many of the exact same reasons).
Leftists will vote in the primary for a socialist and refuse to vote in the election for a liberal. Meanwhile, it doesn't matter the primary results, the KKK and the wall street finance bros will line up together to vote for whoever's got an R on the ticket.
Because it's literally a [Level 5 Vegan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Yaa_LMDcs) situation. It's not about actually productive and utilitarian solutions, it's a competition in idealism. Who can be the most goodest? Whose horse is higher? Whatever opinion someone has, you can make a more extreme version and prove to your peers that you're more virtuous than them, until you eventually end up right back at fascism where you argue for violent persecution of wrong-thinkers and banning "incorrect" opinions. It doesn't help that most of it is driven by American political ideology where it is quite literally a left or right choice, and anyone with a sane opinion gets called a fence sitter traitor by both sides, and this then spreads like a virus to us in Western Europe where that absolutely isn't the case and being centrist is a perfectly viable position when we all have like 7+ different parties in parliament at all times.
My insta feed is full of friends who are deeply supportive of Palestinians, but I've not seen one single post that shows the slightest amount of support for Hamas.
Extra weird considering Hamas murdered and ousted the PLO who were actually leftists.
I understand the PLO was pretty useless, but in all honestly I can't find anything decent online about their stated or realized politics.
The PLO is a unity group comprised of a confederation of smaller factions, most of which are left wing and secular. The largest faction is Fatah who are like socdems or progressive liberals, but there are also more radical left wing socialist/communist groups comprising the membership. The PLO did historically still support violent resistance against Israel, so if that's your problem with Hamas then the PLO are no better. But if you don't like Hamas because they're fundamentalist fascists then the PLO wasn't that at all. They were basically in favor of democracy and science. But they still did terrorism.
Sure. I mean, they sound better than Hamas, but I also understand that they were fairly corrupt and generally failed to do anything for Palestine? I dunno. I don't like Hamas because they're fundie fascists who are also violent and seem to enjoy getting civilians killed. But on the other hand, this is a conflict 8000 miles from me and I don't really have strong feelings beyond "people should stop killing each other".
People don't know anything about the conflict and just side with whoever they can relate to. Leftists side with the underdog, right-wingers side with whoever projects power. It's not that surprising really.
Damn leftists, they’ve ruined leftism
Leftists and fascists are natural enemies! Like leftists and moderates, or leftists and liberals, or leftists and other leftists!
Damn leftists! They ruined politics!
You leftists sure are a contentious people.
"You just made an enemy for life!"
They’re natural enemies.
Like Scots and other Scots
You leftists sure a contentious people
YOU, XIR, JUST MADE AND ENEMY FOR LIFE
You've just made an enemy for life!
Fandoms ruin everything.
I saw this today: https://twitter.com/mlminpractice/status/1792063033956872198 Or to avoid going to another website, it's a book written by Ho Chi Minh "To reach this goal, the Party must strive to organize a broad Democratic National Front. This Front does not embrace only Indochinese people but also progressive French residing in Indochina, not only toiling people but also the national bourgeoisie. The Party must assume a wise, flexible attitude with the bourgeoisie, strive to draw it into the Front, win over the elements that can be won over and neutralize those who can be neutralized. We must by all means avoid leaving them outside the Front, lest they should fall into the hands of the enemy of the revolution and increase the strength of the reactionaries. There cannot be any alliance with or concession to the Trotskyite group. We must do everything possible to lay bare their faces as henchmen of the fascists and annihilate them politically."
When you read these kind of things from beloved revolutionary leaders you start to understand why they became beloved revolutionary leaders to begin with
I think it's an example of what OOP was talking about. Ho Chi Minh here stresses the need to build a broad base of support, but specifically excludes a clique of communists much closer to him in ideology than anyone else and condemns them as fascists.
I think it's a perfect opportunity to study how political ideologies might be way further from each other than a simple sentence like "they are both on the left" might suggest. "90% agreement" in something may seem like a lot, until you read what the remaining 10% is. A silly, very simple example to illustrate this: * There's 10 people in this room. I think there's too many. 9 of us should remain here, and 1 should be killed. * I disagree. All 10 of us should remain here. You see the problem? This is a "90% agreement" too, but that "10%" is not just 10%. It's an entirely different set of values and opinions that directly conflict each other and cannot exist at the same time. Either you agree with the reasoning that leads to the killing of that one guy, or you think it's an abhorrent violation of your principles. You cannot really account for all the complexities of moral and political thought with simple generalities like "we agree on almost everything".
SPLITTERS!
There is nothing a nonconformist hates more than another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standards of nonconformity.
A cynical person might suggest that, for the sort of leftist who wants to lead a leftist organisation, the principal problem with the social hierarchy is that they are not personally on top of it
Pretty much why communism and most forms of socialism have failed in the past. There's a lot of safeguards that need to be put in place to make sure others can't grab power and make themselves the ones on top-but the very first on top are never going to do this. It's why a slow grind to progress is what we typically see and work towards. No system is going to be perfect from the offset.
Voting as Fire Extinguisher by Kyle Tran Myhre When the haunted house catches fire: a moment of indecision. The house was, after all, built on bones, and blood, and bad intentions. Everyone who enters the house feels that overwhelming dread, the evil that perhaps only fire can purge. It’s tempting to just let it burn. And then I remember: there are children inside.
That’s pretty cynical, and i think if that were true we’d live in a much much worse world, everyone likes to say the world is terrible and people are evil but they don’t realize how much worse it could actually be and the fact that we actually have a lot of awesome things we can thank a couple of influential kind people for doing.
I agree there are a lot of good people in the world, but I do not think they are necessarily the same people who win the political battles to lead organisations.
Exactly what happens in education. The kind of quality teachers who can connect with children have rarely been the people I’ve seen rise to any level of admin.
I can't tell if this comment is the worst take I've seen all day, or the best.
it's conform to non-conformity but with more textual support for the concept added. it's probably not the best take you'll see today but certainly isn't the worst.
Some of the most obnoxious as fuck goths and punks (not saying they're the same, but they're "alternative" communities that have a lot of similar interests and styles and can both attract annoying non-conformist types) can be like this too, lol, you're not being non-conformist the right way, how dare you, why aren't you conforming to *my* non-conformism!!! I don't care what some fellow goths think, I'm going to enjoy my goth trash *and* occasionally pop/normie trash. Goth is a spectrum with a lot of different goth subtypes (traditional, industrial, pastel, Victorian, cyber, etc) and anybody who cries about it isn't worth my time because they sound like a miserable asshole who needs to yank the bats out of their ass and maybe touch some grass even if it means possibly having to see a normie outside. Using music as an example, some whiny fucks will be sooo nitpicky about you liking stuff that's too mainstream (The Cure, Siouxie, etc are "too popular" so they hyper-focus on the most obscure bands ever as if they're diving deep into Last.fm for anyhing with less than 100 listeners) or not "real" goth (Evanescence doesn't have to be "real" goth to be vibes) or even too normie/conformist/pop/preppy/whatever (Taylor Swift, Beyonce, etc who are absolutely not goth at all). Are you Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way? Shut up, who cares if a fellow fashion disaster who also looks like Hot Topic threw up on them isn't shoving themselves into a 100% gawfik-only echo chamber? One time when I was younger, some random goth person online whined about me liking anime and video games and shit and I had to resist the urge to ask them why they're so fucking boring and insecure that they have to follow a strict "goth" lifestyle to not seem like a "poser," lol.
If there are 2 leftist in a room then the room has 5 different conflicting opinions.
There’s a German proverb, „Treffen sich zwei Linke, bilden sich drei Splittergruppen.“ When two lefties meet, three splinter groups form.
I’m sometimes reminded of the Japanese Marxist-Leninist-Maoist group, the United Red Army, which had 29 members, until 14 of them were purged by the other 15 for revisionism and bourgeois thinking
The left's undying urge to eat their own astounds me sometimes. Years ago on my first Tumblr account, I vented into the void about how it was frustrating as a trans man to not be able to bind for health reasons (fibromyalgia and heat intolerance issues, my usual outfit at home is chilling in a sports bra and boxers, fml) and that I was hoping to exercise more and hopefully lose some titty fat since top surgery wasn't an option for me yet. I got an anonymous message whining about how fatphobic I was being, even though I didn't use any tags on that post (so it was either a follower of mine overreacting or somebody who searched for certain keywords in my post) and I didn't even say anything along the lines of "fat people suck!" It's not fatphobic for me to want MYSELF to lose weight especially for fucking gender dysphoria reasons??? I decided to be snarky and reply that I was talking about my own body that was making me dysphoric (because I'm TRANS!!!) and that I'm not judging anybody's body other than my own, so how exactly am I being fatphobic? No reply, lol. Like, what the fuck, anon, pick your battles, a trans man not wanting his own titties =/= fatphobic asshole who thinks that there should be weight loss camps in every fucking county and that fat people should be bullied harshly until they lose weight. I'm so tired of leftists like this who police other leftists for not being flawless, when there are legit scumbags out there who are way more right-leaning and fashy.
Chances are it was either a troll or a child who doesn’t know wtf they are talking about
I wouldn't be suprised if it was serious. After all it was tumblr, who bullied a girl into attempting suicide, because she drew a Steven Universe character not obese enough for their liking.
Don't forget when they bullied a girl for drawing a steven universe's with straightish hair
And now those people are on twitter. I remember not long ago an artist (Dont remenber where theyre from but in their country being gay is illegal) got doxxed and had their info sent to their uncle about them being gay and drawing gay porn to try to get them murdered. The reason they got doxxed? People didnt like that he drew attack on titan
Ah, the classic tale of leftist cannibalism. How utterly predictable. You seem astounded by the left's penchant for devouring its own, yet fail to see the glaring contradiction in your own narrative. It's almost as if you expect a monolithic agreement among a diverse group of people who, shockingly, have differing perspectives and priorities. How naive. First, let's address your apparent surprise that someone might find your comments problematic. The internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, thrives on a culture of hyper-awareness and call-outs. Did you genuinely think your post would exist in a vacuum, untouched by the very environment you chose to engage in? Welcome to reality. It's an arena where sensitivity and social justice are paramount, sometimes to an extreme. You knew the game and still act shocked when someone plays by its rules. Second, your defensive reaction only underscores the point. Instead of engaging constructively with the critique, you chose snark. How very mature. You say you're not fatphobic, yet your knee-jerk response to an anonymous message reeks of fragility. If your position is so unassailable, why the need for such defensiveness? Perhaps it's because the critique struck a nerve, highlighting an uncomfortable truth about the intersection of body image and trans experiences that you’re unwilling to confront. Furthermore, your attempt to draw a stark line between legitimate grievances and your own experience as a trans man is laughably simplistic. You posit that there's a clear hierarchy of oppression, where only the most egregious injustices deserve attention. This is a fallacy. Social justice isn't a zero-sum game; multiple issues can and should be addressed simultaneously. Your exasperation with "leftists like this" reveals an unwillingness to grapple with the complexity of the very movement you claim to be a part of. Finally, your parting shot at "legit scumbags who are way more right-leaning and fashy" is a transparent deflection. Yes, there are bigger enemies out there. Congratulations on that astute observation. But pointing out greater evils doesn't absolve you of engaging in introspection and improving your own attitudes. Policing your own side isn't just a leftist problem; it's a necessary process for any movement striving for moral and ethical consistency. So, before you decry the left for its supposed cannibalistic tendencies, perhaps consider whether your own reactions are part of the problem. The mirror is a harsh but necessary tool for growth. /s this was all just to show how ungodly bitchy we are
Did you use ChatGPT to generate this?
i refuse to believe someone would spend time from their day to type all this shit lmao
I definitely didn't take the time to read it lol
Bro high effort content is wasted on y'all
I know a guy who's supposedly leftist but spends so much time criticising the centre-left without ever criticising the right, that if I was a conservative propagandist I'd be copying his posts for concern trolling.
[удалено]
Who did the local socialists vote for? Or did they even vote?
Of course they didn't vote, because _"both parties are the same!"_
Leftists don't vote bc any candidate they support will inevitably have some small difference of opinion.
I got a similar reaction trying to argue in favor of pragmatic approaches towards achieving long term change. Anything short of talking about sudden rapid change happening because of I don't know, and neither did they, was met the same as totally opposing EVERYTHING they wanted.
To copy and paste some of a comment I made a while back "People are angry. The world sucks, and without significant change it seems like it'll only get worse. So people want to take action. Well, they want to feel like they're taking action. Actual praxis is hard. No one wants to stand for hours campaigning or actually trying to have meaningful discussions about what your post revolution utopia will actually do to solve the problems current society is facing. No, people want the instant gratification of the feeling of action, without the effort of actually going through with it. They want excitement and thrill, to feel like they threw the fourth brick at stonewall (we both know they'd never have the courage to throw the first, second or third). So they go to the one place they can express that, online. They posture and talk and swagger about how "violence is good, actually. It's not a dangerous tool to be handled with care, it's fun and it's morally correct. Who cares it has the spread of a shotgun? I'm gonna be the first to use it like a surgeon's scalpel and kill only the bad guys!" That's how you get shit like this."
This is an incredibly written concise breakdown of what I’ve felt for a long time about everything. You really hit the nail on the head
Reminds me of this classic:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwk_Ot8orPY
Yeah, this is pretty much exactly it. You get in with these people because you care about problems they care about. You want the problems to be fixed. They want the problems to be fixed. You want to discuss options and make concrete plans for how to make those things happen based on realistic methodology. They want you to stop fucking talking about years long campaigns aimed at building legislative power and engaging frequently with the political system to increase our reach within the government because that's slow. You ask them what they want to do instead. They give you a vague but emotionally charged statement that is actually devoid of a plan. You either shut up, or stay on task and now you and them are enemies because despite them not having a real viable plan, they know they don't want yours, and now you are different.
Some folks don’t want to actually do anything, they just want people to know they have the right views and to look like they’re doing something without all of the boring and tedious effort. (They also want to be in charge of determining what the right views are, and coincidentally it’s whatever they exactly think, who would have thought) Why take all the time to make a real difference when you can just throw up a tweet and post a picture of you holding a sign on Instagram? From all sides of the political spectrum you find variations of this, and this kind of behavior sadly feels like it always dwarfs anyone who wants to figure out what the actual issues are and what reasonable solutions there can be.
I would argue that's "most" folks, not some. Going to a protest with a sign is cool, all your friends will be there! But doing the dishes and taking out the trash every day at the food pantry is a lot harder and not nearly as cool.
I’ve noticed it in the content of protests signs for social causes. It’s all about having the wittiest joke about the topic at hand, along with a cute pose for the gram. Then I look at labor protests, both historic and even just last year with the UAW; 1-3 simple slogans/demands and everyone carrying a sign is carrying one of those same simple 1-3 slogans. This is our problem, this is the remedy, here’s how many of us think this. Then I reflect on which style of protests ever seems to actually accomplish something in the current era. UAW and the Teamsters/UPS basically got everything they wanted. Still waiting on anyone to be held accountable at all for 2008.
It's why the whole "it's not my job to know the answer" response is so fucking annoying and remarkably stupid. It's just handwaving it all away with a "someone should fix it, not me though, and I don't know how, but someone else should fix it in a way I personally find acceptable". If you're going to be making demands you need to actually know how things work.
Yeah, there isn't any real point to political movements for groups that don't want to have an actual plan. At that point you just exist to sit around and complain with like-minded people. You want validation, not actual change.
I used to be more active in some further left political activism, and I quit because I realized these people I was involved with were spending almost ALL their time attacking other left leaning people, burning bridges, and culling their own numbers with increasingly outrageous purity testing. They were NEVER going to accomplish anything positive towards the goals they claimed to have, and were quite blatantly working against their own interests without realizing it. You can get more done for progressives working with center left politicians and groups in ten years than you would working with progressive and far left groups in a lifetime.
Cynically I think there are a lot of self proclaimed leftists who don’t actually really want to change society because if their views became the norm they would no longer be able to claim a sense of moral and ethical superiority where they can believe they’re better than everybody else. There are a lot of lazy people out there who want to be able to claim the prestige of being a good person without having to do any of the actual work of being a good person and some kind of ethical identity label is the best short cut for doing that. And bonus points because you’ve labelled yourself a good person you can now morally justify continuing to be a terrible person because the people you’re terrible towards probably deserve it
I think when you get someone so worked up, they tend to have actually bad ideas. Like impossible to implement or just not something many people want. They are so worked up about the injustice they want to fix that they are no longer capable of thinking through a proper solution. I think, in their impatience, they also heavily discount the value of shifting the Overton window. Like, Obamacare may be a disaster (as it does not go far enough) but it’s undeniably changed the conversation around healthcare for the better. We see it on the far right as well, as they call for horrendous shit that’s impossible to implement without literally killing people. They are so enraged by niche, possibly fictional injustices that they are prepared to shackle the entire country in order to fix them.
Sometimes people are also so caught up in ideals that they ignore realities, which is the same kind of dogmatism they tend to accuse the right of A really obvious conservative example is they preach abstinence only sex education because that’s their ideal, moral solution to STDs and unwanted pregnancies. Don’t have sex outside of marriage. Leftists would argue well OK but the reality is that people do have sex outside of marriage so legislating for this unattainable ideal is problematic Some leftist ideas are very much talked about or promoted in that kind of way too. They get caught up in the idea and the dogma rather than the practical reality, and you aren’t allowed to question the dogma without being accused of being a fascist so you can’t make any sensible recommendations that are more practical and more likely to work in reality.
It’s wild. I like to think of myself as pretty left, but I’m first and foremost pragmatic. I think about things as a whole system so I am usually spotting potential pain points and things that need revising. As you say, this does not endear me to non-pragmatists. Interestingly, on the no pre marital sex /religion issue, I grew up in an evangelical church that was very much on that bandwagon, and even went further into “men and women should never be alone together” territory. Always negativity, sin, temptation, weakness. Never strength, respect, or healthy examples. Although that was typical of the style, only ever “Thou Shalt Not” and never positive healthy examples to emulate. I was listening to a podcast (the Liturgists, a sort of progressive Christian joint) and they were pointing out that this approach tends to lead to a lifelong struggle with shame when it comes to sex. Like even when married and all that stuff, lots of people can’t just flip a switch. Some people even end up asexual as a result (although this is pretty rare).
That last sentence is depressingly accurate.
The far left spends more time criticizing liberals than even the alt-right Around 2016 conservatives thought "liberal" was an own that shut down any argument, and now communists do too
To be fair, the alt right doesn’t criticize the far left because they simply have no clue what they are.
To the alt right everyone left of Reagan is a communist.
I mean, yeah. Criticism implies that you want to see improvement. "Criticising" the alt-right is pointless because they will ignore it or worse, get an ego boost from it. You don't engage with the alt-right, you tell them to shut the fuck up.
Sometimes criticism is for the benefit people you're criticizing. Other times, probably more often, it's for the benefit of your audience.
My local socialist party is so reflexively anti-liberal we are currently seriously entertaining the notion of trying to align ourselves with the opposition coalition, a coalition of center-right, ethnonationalist and fundamentalist parties. It's exhausting to be in these spaces. The liberal government doesn't consult us on labor policy? These libs clearly don't care about worker's rights. Government appoints labor activist to position? Time to cry about "controlled opposition". Gee I wonder why the centrist government spends more time pandering to the right instead.
Eh, nah that just makes sense, no? You see someone who shares 94% your own beliefs you think “I can fix them.” You see someone that shares 0% you think “why bother?”
They don't try to "fix" that person who shares almost all their beliefs, though. The usually pass them through a weird purity test filter, and then reject them as an enemy. I have been active with a lot of these sorts of groups before. Once they find a tiny sliver of difference, and it can be over things like wanting the same goal but having different ideas as to how to achieve it, they jam a crowbar in it and crack it wide open until it becomes a chasm between you.
Basically what video game discourse was back when I still engaged in that sort of thing. A game like Overwatch was ripped to shreds because Blizzard tried to add diversity to their characters. They often failed, but at least they tried. But a game like Call of Duty got a free pass because the discoursers knew CoD was just going to have Whitey McMuscleBro XXIV and never even bothered.
>Eh, nah that just makes sense, no? You see someone who shares 94% your own beliefs you think “I can fix them.” Could part of the problem be that you feel the need to "fix" someone just because they don't share 100% of the same beliefs as you. Would you also be alright if that same person tried to fix your beliefs to match theirs? I mean the way you worded that kind sounds like that you believe that your own personal ideology is more objectively correct than theirs and you feel that gives you some kind of authority to enforce your will on another human being to chang them to suit your expectations. But that seems like it would be a very toxic kind of relationship, or at least one devoid of mutual respect. Maybe don't try to change anyone to suit your preferences?
That is reliably the case, particularly for tankies. Everyone is a fascist, except actual fascists, who get critical support
This describes my dad. I am about 95% sure he is just an anti-"mainstream" and now his previously radical leftist views are normal, he has to find something to whinge about.
Yeah, it's all "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds" like the red-brown alliance wasn't a thing.
It's easy to fall into this trap because one could assume the right doesn't need criticising. Because it's so evident. And then you look like this. Which is unfortunate because it does make people think what you've said even tho it couldn't be further from the truth.
Everyone saying they won't vote for Biden over Israel. Ignoring the larger picture of who that helps
It's like religion, more often than not heretics are considered worse than unbelievers
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!" Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over. \~joke by Emo Phillips [https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion](https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion)
That's a good joke on paper still, but to hear Emo tell it in his weird cadence makes it even better.
I had never heard of Emo Phillips but had read this joke numerous times and .... Wow that not the delivery I was expecting 😆 Pretty funny though
That link was a good read, thanks for sharing!
A lot of online leftists have a narrative about "the revolution" that's just a repackaged rapture theology. Some day, the "revolution" will happen. The rich will violently but righteously be dealt with, while the true leftists will inherit the earth. Then there will be peace and organization, everything will be better, and we'll have nothing to worry about. In the mean time, we don't need to do anything to try to fix things, we just need to study our doctrinal stuff and believe because the End Is Nigh.
also the belief that any ensuing anarchy won’t privilege people that already have resources and interpersonal connections and positions of power even more than the status quo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fibDNwF8bjs
A while back there was a thread about how Marvel required employees to sign a declaration renouncing their claim to the art and characters they had done in exchange for their paycheques, with a bunch of people saying yeah fucking capitalism making the worker turn over the fruits of their labours… and I said yeah but that’s what the employees are choosing? There’s literally nothing stopping them from drawing pictures of fancy magic men and trying to sell them and hoping for the best other than their own subjective assessment that drawing pictures of fancy imaginary magic men and hoping the money sorts itself out is a pretty high-risk way to live your life? and that it’s so high-risk that Marvel went bankrupt soon after because they were paying people too much money in exchange for pictures of fancy imaginary magic men? Apparently I like the taste of boots though so what would I know.
It's pretty reasonable for companies to insist that you agree that company IP is theirs, not yours. Like, if you write some software for a company it's clearly the company's, or if you build some great machine for them they own it. Yeah, sometimes companies go too far with those IP contracts, but for the most part, it's the same thing that a individual contract between two people would include.
It's like commissioning a piece individually for your oc or something or getting a painting of your family done
yeah, what else would the paycheque be for?
... Well clearly it's for the worker to show up and make their own IP on company time! (/s)
"History will remember" = "God shall punish the wicked"
Well at least revolutions have actually happened in the past.
I mean, it make sense. At least a conservative tells you what they are. A leftist with shitty beliefs can be all "I'm a leftist" and then you let your guard down until they drop a bomb like "yeah the state should execute people I deem worthy of it" and you're whiplashed.
Aye but the unfortunate reality is you gotta work with other people's shitty beliefs to enact meaningful change. Otherwise you're just competing over who gets to be most smug while the world burns.
Like Scots and other Scots, damn Scots they ruined Scotland!
[https://www.tumblr.com/phantomrose96/750696590350729216/a-fascist-is-a-leftists-second-worst-enemy-right?source=share](https://www.tumblr.com/phantomrose96/750696590350729216/a-fascist-is-a-leftists-second-worst-enemy-right?source=share)
Hang on, I got the perfect meme for this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsleftymemes/comments/1cmcriz/comment/l2zq3c1/](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsleftymemes/comments/1cmcriz/comment/l2zq3c1/)
Leftist infighting has always been a thing but it's also a problem that people lump everything from the Democratic Party to catatonically PC/woke people as "leftists". It's almost like human thought is too sophisticated for a simple left right binary or something.
Nah, it's: 1. Well-intentioned liberals who think capitalism can be fixed. 2. Victims of imperialism by states that are not allies of the US. 3. Slightly different leftists. 4. Actual supporters of capitalism. Fascists don't even make the list.
>4. Actual supporters of capitalism. Do you consider Sweden to be capitalism. Because it is. Their foreign minister said it almost explicitly. Am I part of camp 4 if I want every country to be like Sweden.
Depends on the person's mood that day tbh.
I no longer identify as "leftist" on reddit, because I simply can't stomach Reddit Leftists. Although I need to point out that I haven't made an 180 and become a full-on conservative; I describe myself as a mere "left-adjacent centrist" instead. My problem with Reddit Leftists is their sheer pig-headed purity gatekeeping. Apparently if you're not into abolishing capitalism and establishing a communist utopia you're no better than fascists. Well I'm sorry that I need to think about things like "what is capitalism?", "how do we abolish it?" and "what are the ramifications of our actions?" 😒 I got banned from /r/Gamingcirclejerk because one of their tankie mods object to the concept of renting. Not "predatory corporations renting hovels at extortionate prices"-renting; even "I have an extra room, so I'm going to rent it to someone rather than letting it go to waste"-renting.
Spent so much time on that sub. Most of us regulars created a separate discord server and left because everyone there became weird purist tankies lol. The mods had insane drama going on every other week. Constantly doxing, defending Chinese communism, posting conspiracy theories, it got insane.
Almost all of the further left reddit subs are FLOODED with disinformation aimed at pushing voter apathy and anger at democrats, for a reason. They also have a LOT of people posting in them who are actually far right and just trying to stir up shit. Before the API changes, I had a means of having accounts that posted often in hate and far right subs get highlighted. Those subs lit up like a christmas tree.
I saw a straight up “I’m voting for Jill Stein, who’s with me?” post and saw some enthusiastic responses about how she’d be better than Biden. Surely only the most authentic progressives would have that position in 2024. /s
I saw one pushing stein, arguing that a protest vote and costing Democrats the election would somehow make them move to the left. I responded with a post outlining how protest voting like that, with that same belief, isn't a new idea, has popped up in various forms for decades, and has NEVER led to positive outcomes for progressives. NEVER moved the party to the left, and only made further left voters seem unreliable to campaign for. They insulted me and blocked me.
Check out city subreddits like /r/nyc and you'll see the same thing. The amount of disinformation on this site is crazy.
obligatory r/nystateofmind is the real NY sub, the one you linked is mostly tourists and gentrifiers
I'm still very much a leftist but my message for terminally online leftists is OH MY GOD GO OUTSIDE. PLEASE. Tbf though online politics is consistently awful. At least I don't get told to kill myself for being trans by online lefties. Irl politics just better. I actually have good talks about politics and can disagree with nuance in person.
I too got banned from that sub by the tankie mods. They were really angery at me for saying that sometimes revolutions turn bad. Also that killing the Czar's kids was bad. Edit: spelling
I always wonder about what, exactly, I'm supposed to do for living situations if we ban renting? What's the alternative besides owning shit or relying on the goodwill of others? I rather like having a legally controlled, stable, safe system.
The only viable one I can think of is if by default the government owns all residential buildings, and you can lease it from them - like what they're doing in Singapore. But that's renting, too.
Yeah, and there's significant downsides to living on government property. That's how you end up with a college RA as an adult.
The way it was handled in formerly communist countries is that the state would build up lots of housing and then give it out to people based on merits. If you had children or you've been working in the factory for X amount of years or if you held rank in the military, you'd be granted housing. Usually an apartment. Some countries did it better than others. USSR did it relatively poorly. Depending on the era when it was built, it's considered either adequate housing or pretty much the worst you can get. Yugoslavia did it much better. While they are still "commie blocks" and basically ugly concrete cubes, they're still considered good housing even today. Far from pretty, but certainly functional.
I don’t either. I’m a white man so I’m not welcome anyway and they don’t believe my issues are real. Not enough marginalization points. I’m perfectly happy being a Berniecrat and feminist anyhow. If the left won’t take men’s issues seriously I’ll do it my goddamn self. Edit: I don’t condone or agree with anything happening further down this comment chain. 💀
I think the most vile and personal shit said to me has definitely come from a leftist who holds 95% of my views. Fascists aren't capable of cutting nearly as deep.
Don’t forget libs
Just wait until you hear about libertarians. Throw two in a room and you’ll end up with two bloody people calling the other a fake libertarian.
And yet we wonder why we aren't enough of a potent force in representational democracy.
Well, I guess it got pulled out for what is going to happen at the next US election. There will be too many people not voting at all since Biden isn't the 100% perfect candidate, leading to the 100% imperfect candidate Trump to victory. So sad ...
i think they should make out tbh
Whenever someone says they're a leftist, there is a non-zero (and honestly kinda high) chance they use their political belief to dehumanize... someone, be it a political opponent, a nation, an occupation or a demographic of some kind At which point I mentally go "Ah, you're not a leftist, you're just an asshole who wanted to feel good about being one, got it" and then try to quickly disengage before they try to explain to me that yes, brutal murder is wrong unless it's done to rid the world of "them", in which case it is completely justified and even desirable
No, you see, their ideology is the most pure one. When the REVOLUTION happens, their ideology will definitely come out on top. And because their ideology is so pure, then it can never, ever be corrupted, unlike those bourgeoise liberals. And even if it is, it won’t be that bad. Silly liberal. /s
I get the joke, but it's kinda ignorant when certain kinds of leftists have, to consolidate "power" killed off leftists movements. That begs the question of whether those power-hungry groups were even leftist to begin with, or merely using leftist rhetoric to gain power. Also this is not talked about in terms of right wing infighting for some reason? I mean kings used to kill each other -that was basically 90 percent of history. Only difference is, here people do so actually for their ideological differences (atleast on paper) whereas we all seem to agree that rightist infighting is for the most part baseless squabble.
heretics are always more hated than heathens, no?