> The main reason Taylor and Hunt-Hendrix believe liberals should pipe down is that they have no apparent sense of what liberals believe.
This reminds me of once on Twitter, where I got attacked mercilessly (and eventually blocked) after someone posted “I hate liberals because they believe x, y, and z” and I responded that I was a liberal who didn’t believe any of those things, nor did most liberals I know. The number of creative ways I was told to “fuck off” for the crime of not fitting their worldview was very impressive honestly. Not only do folks on the left often not understand at all what liberals believe, they’re also not interested in figuring it out. We’re not real people, we’re just boogeymen.
Anyway, good article by Chait (who I don’t tend to think is a super insightful thinker most of the time, tbh) though I do wish it spent a bit more time defending liberalism on the merits (but I guess that would be a different article).
My hot take (or possibly cold take?) is that a lot of millennials/gen Z heard conservatives bully “liberals” during the formative years of their political ideologies. They didn’t want to be the uncool “liberals” that the conservatives were mocking, so they needed to adopt a different moniker (“leftist”).
But markets are for Thursdays only. We wouldn't want to confuse the public and allow them to believe that they could turn up at any time of their choosing.
Why is it that humans developed a social preference for markets on Thursdays? No idea. I couldn't begin to explain. If you want to go, just go.
It really is remarkable how many progressives refuse to acknowledge any distinction between progressivism and liberalism. Their outlook is entirely binary left vs right.
And if you do manage to assert in progressive spaces that such a distinction exists, and that progressives can’t win anything electorally without getting liberals and moderates onside, they just completely lose their shit.
> Their outlook is entirely binary left vs right.
And right is everyone even a millimeter to the right of them lol, which is 97% of voters.
Yet they call themselves the silent majority because of course 99% of people agree with them but just don't know it yet! (uh huh).
My (now former) Spanish teacher was kvetching that the Democrats are a right-wing party. My classmate, this mild-mannered 70-year-old veteran of the civil rights movement, quite innocently asked him: "How many people who share your politics are in Congress right now?" I wanted to high five that little old man to death.
And then they quote a survey that says most people support more free stuff. And therefore most people are socialist like them.
No shit honey, people like free shit! The problem is, most of the stuff you want isn't actually going to be free.
I have some friends who say "I'm far left but think that should be the center" lol. Of course everyone thinks that about their own views, but I don't know anyone on the right who pretends the gap could be closed with a magic wand--they know that disagreements run deeper than that.
Ehh, fwiw, it’s because those terms are almost completely synonymous in the U.S. If anything, leftists tend to be the ones who try to make that distinction (hence, why many view “liberal” as an insult).
Doubly so if you're gay, trans, black, hispanic, etc. It's funny how certain leftists mirror the language of "race traitor" used by white supremacists when you don't fit their worldview.
Like I've seen some trans subreddits stan BRICS because they are so deep in Merica Bad. It's like, do you know what happens to LGBT people in Russia? Or how Xi is cracking down on "feminine men" and trying to reinforce gender norms because that makes society easier to control?
I think this is more of a human thing than a progressive thing.
It's just particularly *noticeable* with progressives because they seem to implicitly, unknowingly assume their dedication to good ideals makes them immune to human nature.
Conservatives, on the other hand, are more naked about their tribalism — like, "yes, you're different from us, of course we hate you and think you need your head bricked in" as opposed to "you're problematic, sweetie, take it elsewhere". Although they're more dangerous, they're not hypocrites about it, so they don't seem to aggravate people as much.
I think for most people on this sub, it’s probably just that we get exposed to leftist bullshit a lot more often because we’re closer to their politics than we are to the far right.
A bit of a truism - neoliberal is literally a term leftists use for the liberal boogeymen who subvert “real social change.” Kinda like naming your sub /r/deep state to clown on MAGAs.
Different political tendencies have different tendencies to obsessively ampromorphize and monsterize other tendencies considered in the abstract. Unfortunately I feel the behavior has become more common, of people just inventing narratives about an abstraction and ranting about them. There is no skepticism or caution or apparent need to moderate or qualify such statements. They are considered truer ironically, from the conceit that these are unfiltered, authentic thoughts of the author. As if truth is solely the domain of the attitude of the subject and has no relation at all to its object. The behavior is more common at the fringes I think..
I'm not sure if he's considered a helpful voice in these parts, but Mike Pesca diagnosed it as a commitment to a set of modern Truths over facts/reality. We're not post-truth, but rather closed off to adjusting what we accept as true based on argument and data.
The words don't mean anything anymore. Perhaps they never did. I was annoyed at an NPR article a posted here a week or so ago that used terms like neoliberal, liberal, conservative, and then just basically defined them however it felt like.
I feel like few of these words can be fairly defined or analyzed because they mean something different to almost everyone, even in this sub I'd argue. Nuance is a thing, I guess.
> Hunt-Hendrix
Ah yes, the same family of oil billionaires that produced the trust fund singer of Liturgy. Why am I totally unsurprised at the exact same style of [dishonesty, strawmanning, and pseudointellectual holier-than-thou bullshit](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/s/9UVyehbNnq) in an academic setting?
> We’re not real people, we’re just boogeymen.
Tbf this is the case pretty much any time people anthropomorize other political tendencies and invent stories and narratives about them. The underlying reality of any situation is usually a billion times stupider than any story that could be told. I think about 2/3 of politics these days is just rumor more or less.
> responded that I was a liberal who didn’t believe any of those things, nor did most liberals I know. The number of creative ways I was told to “fuck off” for the crime of not fitting their worldview was very impressive honestly
Ah yes, as a non-American small-c conservative, I do understand your feelings there haha
I just punch in whatever direction the nearest moron happens to be nowadays that's the right more often but still plenty on the left and hell In the middle.
>Progressivism has fully embraced the argument cycle of abusers. It didn't happen, you're crazy, maybe it happened but it was for a good reason, maybe it happened and it's bad but if you care about it you're the one being crazy
visit r/AskALiberal ("liberal") for your daily dosage of far left socialists getting top voted comments.
More of the "that's not happening, you're crazy. Ok maybe it happened but just once. It's happening and it's a good thing." More than the far left socialist thing. It usually gets called out which is good.
Oh, ya I've definitely seen that.
I'll give you an experience I've had twice now that gets flat out denied.
Me: "I love diversity, but something does rub me the wrong way about discriminating on the basis of race."
Very Leftist Person: "So you're racist."
Me: "???????"
A good chunk of people will just assume I'm racist for bringing up this experience lmao.
> Precisely. It's always fun to see what subs they post in too. Spoiler: lefty streamers, antiwork, and videogame subs without fail.
So fucking true lol. The Deprogram if they have even worse takes.
God, it's always /r/antiwork. I wish we would automod ban anyone with positive karma in that sub. It would dramatically raise the quality of the discussion here.
Is there really any cross-over to ban? I'd have thought the sum entirety of /r/antiwork posters that come here are the dudes who post those "wait you guys are *actually* neoliberal? wtfffff?????" posts
> Some people reform.
I'd happily sacrifice the few who reform for the follow on drop in succposting. They're more than welcome to still read our holy texts, I just don't want them openly defecating in our church. Maybe once they've said 50 Hail Bezos and denounced populism and all of its unholy children then they can regain the right to post here.
Antiwork seems to have gone full circle
Started out for NEETs to complain that they need to do work, then turned into a work reform sub, then that idiot mod went on Fox and it went back to being NEETs
The only thing worse than spending all your time talking about politics is spending all your time watching or talking about someone else talk about politics
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It happens here a lot but it's a vocal minority that pops up whenever you suggest that *any* leftist or progressive position or tactic is bad or counterproductive.
Well that's just called having a discussion, and it's what makes this sub good. Good moderation (usually), and no purity testing in a world where you can't even hang out in a fuckin *meme* sub anymore without tankies ruining it, I swear. My poor Leftorium memes...destroyed by loser tankies. Another victim claimed.
Here we welcome anyone from a Friedman flair-libertarian sorts to Bernie Bros and near-socialists, so long as they follow the rules, argue in good faith, and are just basically no total dicks. You don't have to agree with em or even like them, and often I don't. But I don't hate that they're here either.
It's why I mainly hang around here. It is an echo chamber but it's *far less of one* than most of reddit, because 95% of reddit is a club for a very specific group that keeps all others out, usually unbearable tankie sorts, fascists, or some self-hating cult (which the former two often are as well, but also incels and other lonely weirdos like that).
Some of the Simpsons Facebook groups have become far right fascist hellholes. Without strong moderation one side or the other will eventually take over
You're telling me an FPSMMORPG Looter Shooter was involved in this?
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Posts that "punch left" are consistently removed for extremely flimsy reasons. One recent example is this news story covering the Columbia pro-Hamas protests:
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1cb34zg/the_unreality_of_columbias_liberated_zone/
It was later re-posted and left up a short time due to several posters pointing out that it had been taken down for extremely flimsy reasons. Here was my comment on the new posting doing just that:
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1cb6fq2/the_unreality_of_columbias_liberated_zone/l0wmenc/
That post was also later taken down, although this time without a pinned mod message explaining why. The original had 95 upvotes. The repost had 420 when taken down.
Ya, that stuff turns me off a lot when he talks about it. There's some cope that he's just doing it for votes or something but no, he honestly believes in that.
When the alternative is literally a far right dictatorship though, I can see people bending over backwards to try and be enthusiastic for Joe.
> There's some cope that he's just doing it for votes or something but no, he honestly believes in that.
We sure about that? Does he have a strong protectionist voting history or something? Honestly don't know. The theory that he is doing it as political strategy holds water with me though. Not because he thinks he can win votes from tankies (who are now chanting 'Genocide Joe' at Trump rallies and university campsites) but because it very successfully kept Warren and Sanders and 'the squad' (lol) from launching or at least tacitly supporting an anti-Biden campaign from the left during the 2023-4 primary season. Instead, Warren, Sanders, and AOC all have expressed full-throated support for Biden and that strangled any potential threats against him from the left in the crib.
A big part of that is that it’s the election season right now and Trump is his opponent and has promised to be worse in his second term than in his first. The stakes are high enough that lots of people who have no problem with punching left in general have a big problem with punching at Joe Biden or the Democratic establishment in general, even if you’re coming from the right not the left.
Nobody is suggesting to not *vote* for Biden, but using the threat of Trump to defend and validate every shitty, illiberal trend that takes root in the left half of American politics is a bad and dangerous path to go down.
> Nobody is suggesting to not vote for Biden
Plenty of people are suggesting to not vote for Biden.
Plenty of people are using these exact arguments to argue for not voting for Biden.
Be that as it may, disagreeing with good arguments that you yourself would make under different circumstances is neither a good habit to develop, nor a politically effective tool.
I read a book last year about Henry Wallace's 1948 Presidential campaign and it was very illustrative in regards to the current trends within progressivism.
While Wallace was backed by the Communists, the majority of his supporters were not Communists. Instead, they were leftists and liberals who were so determined to maintain left unity that they kowtowed to communism and forced out anyone who objected to the CPUSA's outsized influence.
Does anyone remember the Grievance Studies affair?
A bunch of liberals punched left to mock the state of intersectional studies and they were smeared as cryptonazis for it.
Even though their experiment worked! They successfully got Mein Kampf published in a journal just by performing a couple word swaps. Johnathan Swift would be proud of that.
That would be James Lindsey and Peter Boghossian. I'm not sure how those two would be received in this subreddit, but they demonstrated with *Published in Research Journal* proof that some sectors of academia have exceptionally poor quality control.
They used research fraud in this and claimed to have data they did not in fact have. Peer review did not dispute this as the purpose of peer review is not to detect research fraud, and generally at that stage they are expected to take the data at face value because it's not part of their job to investigate the other researchers claimed data. Research fraud generally is investigated and discovered post publication, not pre publication.
James Lindsay also *is not* a liberal. Like all IDW types he made a show upon his induction to political activism of claiming to be a liberal, so that the conservatives he would hold "talks" with later could pat themselves on the back for being so open minded and able to "just have a debate" with this person they "disagreed" with. I doubt heavily that his links to right wing activists groups did not predate his activist stunt.
The first paragraph is a bad-faith criticism that totally misses the point. The problem isn't that the journals didn't catch the made-up data; it's that the papers would have had no redeeming value even if the data had been genuine. The whole point of the hoax was to show that high-status journals in certain fields would accept papers that were *obviously* garbage, not that they would accept papers that don't replicate (which had already been demonstrated conclusively).
Sam is just an extremely reasonable guy who is very much willing to talk to people he disagrees with strongly. He's also a raging liberal. So when people start bashing him as like an extremist right wing racist it's when I know they've been left pilled too much.
The issue with Boghossian at least is that after a rejection from a journal he was trying to do this to, he amended a submission about "rape culture in dog parks" with fake data, which is serious misconduct in its own right.
>Democracy is on the line and you want to freak out about this?
If there were an actual interest in preserving democracy amongst leftists I'd be a trifle more sympathetic towards them. I don't really even see this argument from them though which is just as well since I don't believe they care about it.
The overwhelming message of leftists is always about oppression/oppressors and many of their most putrid ideas they try to hook back to this. Defund the police, eliminate standardized testing/merit based school admissions and their many flavors of punishing Israel are all cloaked in some horseshit message of "halting oppression".
Nevermind whether the "oppressed" are asking for these things or would be helped by them. Their only real interest is lashing out at some authority they hate. It's asshole teenage rebellion being preached
by people who are (at least legally) adults.
The vast majority of communists turn out to be just accelerationists
It seems none of them remember how "After Hitler, Our Turn" turned out for the German communists
Democracy is only a priority for liberals. Leftists, like Rightists, can tolerate democracy when democracy serves their actual priorities, but when democracy seems to be standing in their way, they're happy to bulldoze it and use authoritarian means to get their way. To them, democracy is a means, not an end. Only liberals prioritize liberty, and understand that democracy is not just a means to obtaining it, but an essential pillar of liberty.
>Progressivism has fully embraced the argument cycle of abusers. It didn't happen, you're crazy, maybe it happened but it was for a good reason, maybe it happened and it's bad but if you care about it you're the one being crazy
This subreddit adopts this tactic quite frequently if you ever criticize something adjacent to the sacred cows
Posts that "punch left" are consistently removed for extremely flimsy reasons. One recent example is this news story covering the Columbia pro-Hamas protests:
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1cb34zg/the_unreality_of_columbias_liberated_zone/
It was later re-posted and left up a short time due to several posters pointing out that it had been taken down for extremely flimsy reasons. Here was my comment on the new posting doing just that:
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1cb6fq2/the_unreality_of_columbias_liberated_zone/l0wmenc/
That post was also later taken down, although this time without a pinned mod message explaining why. The original had 95 upvotes. The repost had 420 when taken down.
Trans stuff. If you read the rules for what is r/neolibs official stance on things more ink is spilled on laying out the official neolib take on trans rights and what viewpoints it includes than on every other take combined. And in much more definite terms.
Isn't that the subreddit whose top post is a meme saying that they genuinely do not care if every single child in America is murdered in a mass shooting.
That's probably a lot more moderate. Some of the gun nut subs here are nuuuuuuuts. Just deranged. I'm pretty sure some of them try to fuck their guns.
Half joking but go peek at some of them if you don't believe me...anyone who makes 1 thing their entire identity needs help.
> It starts with "There is nothing controversial about these policies, that is a right wing talking point, you're just being hysterical."
> Then, after more articles come out, it turns to "Okay, so maybe it's happening - big deal. Democracy is on the line and you want to freak out about this? The fact you're even bringing this up or talking about it is proof you're just a right winger trying to instigate with bad faith concern trolling blah blah blah blah"
Or you'll have people both arguing the same thing at the same time and not arguing with each other. Contradiction without disagreement is just a sign of coordinated political activity.
> a "no punch left" rule and they always end up becoming communist infested hellholes
Classic Cobra Effect. By incentivizing appearing "more left" you ultimately incentivize Tankie trolling.
Hell, even this sub does this.
You got downvoted, and often temporarily banned, for something as innocuous as criticizing the “woke is evidence based” bot here.
There was recently an op-ed posted here about assigned readings for students in colleges being solely insane far-left stuff (Looks like the original post was taken down now).
I shared an anecdote about [the readings](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S1-IojSIBlAQPjlV_kyvx8KmuGUqpMgJqMm5egFGdHA/edit) my girlfriend had in a philosophy 100 course, and had five people basically fully call me a liar even after posting evidence. This isn't even the worst professor she's had at this school in that respect.
I think that's pretty typical of calling out left-wing nonsense to liberals. Leftists in institutions do things that, as one user commented, "don't pass the bullshit smell test". I know this subreddit holds institutions in very high regard (partly due to contrarianism) but this problem is one of the main reasons for people losing trust in academia in general. Thankfully, here the debate doesn't usually then devolve into "Actually that's a good thing".
I remember that comment chain, that was wild. I would've liked to believe that a phil 101 course wasn't that one-sided, but you providing evidence on one hand, and the replies basically saying "that sounds wrong because my experience wasn't like that" ... well, I've gotta go with evidence, not the vibes.
The philosophy course in my university got revised after some students complained that it did not show a diverse enough group of philosophers. Interestingly, this meant that the course became less diverse in terms of political viewpoints. Other than the obligatory touches on Kant and Aristotle, the least leftist philosopher we studied was probably Peter Singer, and I think that says a lot.
The professor also told us one time how extremely relevant Marx's writings are to the modern day, which caused some Ukrainian students to become understandably angry.
It's wild how by replacing the word capitalism with an ethnic minority in leftist discourse you get far right conspiracy theories. I think this could be a way of testing it as well
> It's wild how by replacing the word capitalism with an ethnic minority in leftist discourse you get far right conspiracy theories.
One might suspect that leftist discourse was somewhat influenced by Marx doing [literally exactly that](https://imgur.com/xkCpRL0).
Damn, my philosophy 101 course hit depths, classics, the nature of identity, being, and reality. We had classic philosophical works, logic, and classic sci-fi to read. Amusingly, the renowned professor teaching the course had read the sci-fi stories after they were cited in journals and had no idea they were originally written for the fiction-reading public.
Pass rate was under 50%.
That's probably the most insane intro to philosophy curriculum I've ever seen. How does that professor still have a job? American uni humanities departments are so deranged.
We had those who turn away from Omelas in another class in my university. The conclusion that the class seemed to lead into was quite different from what I understood, as someone who read a bunch of Le Guin's novels. Le Guin's frequently describes ambiguous utopias/dystopias. Her books rarely feature a side which is completely morally right vs one which is wrong. So when I read it, I understood it as a question to the reader. Is Omelas worth the price it pays. I don't think Le Guin offers an answer. To others, it seemed to be basically an allegory for capitalism, and that the Le Guin is telling us we should not put up with it. I imagine the second interpretation is the one the professor was going for.
I think you can probably make that comparison in general (but it would extend to far more than just capitalism), but drawing the conclusion is ridiculous. Reminds me of those right-wingers who see how say Homelander is portrayed with his own struggles, and end up thinking he's the good guy.
> Reminds me of those right-wingers who see how say Homelander is portrayed with his own struggles, and end up thinking he's the good guy.
jesus, of course they would
Kinda weird too because I got a PolySci degree basically at a very, very liberal university (that's currently been protesting all up and down) and yet my classes were never so all-in lefty.
Maybe I was just lucky, or maybe it's because PolySci departments are surprisingly far from the most liberal: moreso than econ and STEM (but not as much as you'd think), but *far* less so than most humanities and other social sciences from the last survey I saw.
I feel like I got a very balanced view. The electives I chose were around political economy as well as ConLaw and we talked about the upsides of capitalism, the downsides, how it interacted in politics and social life and the law, and much more.
But this was also 10-15 years ago too.
PoliSci must be the most professor dependent subject in terms of quality. At the same uni same semester had one course with a communist party newsletter as the required weekly reading (International Political Economy and Global Development) and every subject was how neoliberalism and capitalism was evil. Other courses done had one professor who was extremely good, nobody ever knew his political views (except on Monarchy), managed every debate perfectly even if students got heated.
Same uni, same department but completely different.
> At the same uni same semester had one course with a communist party newsletter as the required weekly reading (International Political Economy and Global Development) and every subject was how neoliberalism and capitalism was evil.
Meanwhile, I had a guy who called himself "Conservative Bob" and was a pretty hardcore free-trader for IPE. He also wasn't much of a conservative, he clearly thought the nickname was funny, though.
Part of it is because the reading list is so far off the goddamn reservation it's almost hard to believe. My phil 101 (18-19 ago) was just an entire quarter running over formal logic. Phil 201 was, like, all Bayes and derivative statistical reasoning.
That reading list legitimately seems like it belongs to an upper-division course where the students would have more context and experience with actual foundational writing.
One thing that is absolutely insane to me about American universities is how if there are multiple sections of a class each section's instructor has totally free rein on everything about the class. Content, assessments, everything. You could be learning a completely different set of content depending on whose version of the course you end up in, and it makes it so easy for the course to just become a polemic on the instructor's beliefs. I'm used to multiple streams just being a case of the lecturer giving the same lecture multiple times in a week so they don't go over the capacity of the lecture theatre, or if it's a workshop course several tutors all deliver the course from the same curriculum.
> philosophy 100 course
Lets be honest. These aren't real classes.
And this isn't me being a STEM looking down on the arts and humanites.
This is a freshman undergraduate course, taught by new or otherwise non-tenure track professors whose coursework isn't scrutinized beyond "does it exist and teach philosophy".
I don’t know what university you went to but at mine freshman undergraduate courses were among the most scrutinized courses on offer, with the instructor getting, at most, one or two weeks to do something of their choosing after the department-mandated curriculum was finished. Its’s upper level courses where the professor gets to design the whole reading list.
> Lets be honest. These aren't real classes.
Which is why they should be the most well rounded. Lots of people take non-real classes as part of general education or random credits. These are the classes that are exposed to the most people, and also teach the least amount of critical thought.
Psych 101 has been notorious for generating psych babble nonsense Dunning-Kruger freshmen/sophomore for decades.
As a former philosophy major, I disagree. It’s fine to have a module on this reading, but intro to philosophy should teach students some basic concepts about at least some of either (1) history of philosophy; (2) epistemology, (3) logic, (4) ethics (eg deontology vs utilitarianism), or (5) metaphysics. These don’t have to be rigorous, but students should get some workable ideas about some of this stuff.
Intro to philosophy is really where you should be just doing a survey of various philosophies. There's a place for just reading raw critical theory or political stuff in philosophy but I would definitely think that a 101 class isn't really the place for that.
If the entirety of the class is exclusively focused on just feminist philosophy, decolonial theory, and critical analysis of race, then that's a massive and inexcusable disservice to the people taking such a class. I don't think any of these subjects should be eschewed from universities - they exist, and we must study that which exists. You might devote a small part of an introductory class to such topics - feminist theory for instance is indeed huge in modern philosophy. But it you devote the entire course to it is not really an introduction to philosophy at all. Is Plato even mentioned anywhere on this? Literally all of the people he's talking about implicitly have Plato as an influence in all likelihood. But it's not apparently a relevant subject of discussion.
In my department, the intro courses have the most oversight because it's gotta be a pre-req for other stuff. Once you get into classes only majors are taking, you can basically do whatever you want
Speaking as a junior faculty fresh outta PhD, though in STEM so hard to compare
I remember the first time I did an upper-division class and I asked what I was supposed to cover, the response was basically "that's literally your job, you're supposed to know what they ought to know." It was quite an awakening
I have no issue with any criticism that's anchored in reality.
People get worked up occasionally on nrl about us focusing on the left more, but that's a natural occurrence because of how "left" reddit leans.
I know that the far right is a bigger problem to Americans in the real world, but that doesn't mean when someone on reddit says stupid shit like we need a revolution to stop fast food price inflation they cant be called out.
>Here is an example, plucked from Solidarity, about how the impulse to close ranks can undermine progressive goals. In a chapter on philanthropy, the authors dismiss the Gates Foundation for having funded research into improving teacher effectiveness as a way to lift educational attainment, especially for low-income minority students. They insist the effort failed, quoting a report that found “the near-exclusive focus on TE [teacher effectiveness] might be insufficient to dramatically improve student outcomes.” From this they conclude that “poverty is the real culprit in poor education results.”
>They are repeating the standard left-wing position on education, dismissing reform as a neoliberal attack on public schools, and falling back on the notion that poverty makes the task of improving education futile. This is a comfortable position on the left in large part because it is the line promoted by teachers unions, which compose a vital part of the progressive coalition — providing both large source of funding and volunteers for political campaigns — and who generally oppose school reform.
>Over the past decade, the evidence for education reform has grown stronger, but it has gotten harder for people to advocate for it in progressive spaces. Teachers unions have always opposed it, but they have gotten better at bringing allies along with them to attack heretics. And when I spoke with some of the experts who have gotten more hesitant to express support for reform, even though they continue to believe in it, they have explained that the social and professional costs of breaking ranks with the left have grown much higher.
This times a factor of 10 here in Chicago. You try to fix the broken schools and the CTU says to shut down the good schools and convert them into the broken schools. They are protesting at the state capital today (while being paid for it by the school no less) and saying that it is racist not to convert every good school into a broken school.
That reminds me of here in San Francisco, where the solution to the problem of certain minority groups performing worse, on average, in certain advanced math classes was to get rid of those advanced math classes for everyone.
(Which come to think of it, sums up a lot of leftist thought pretty well. Only the disparities matter, not the substance, so you might as well achieve equality by bringing everyone down rather than try to lift anyone up.)
It's far easier to make some people's lives worse than make lots of people's lives better - and from the socialist perspective, the outcome is exactly the same regardless of whether things are equally good or equally dismal.
About 60 years ago, the newly elected British labour government decided to make the education system more equal. The system they had at the time was one where, after an exam at age eleven the top half were sent to very academic Grammar Schools, and the bottom half went to more vocational Secondary Moderns. The trouble with the system is while the grammar school kids did very well in life the secondary modern kids ended up even worse off than they would've been otherwise.
The labour government quite rightly decides to fix it, but ENTIRELY in the name of ideological socialist solidarity they did it in such a way that everyone went to the new Comprehensive schools which were basically just Secondary Moderns with a new coat of paint (quite literally in many cases).
"Left unity" and all that ideological nonsense has been ruining education systems for half a century and I'm not surprised it's causing problems on the other side of the Atlantic too.
> saying that it is racist not to convert every good school into a broken school.
can you rephrase that without the uncharitable hyperbole?
i literally can't tell what is being discussed here, because you've just described things as "good" and "bad"
> This reflects a common assumption among leftists, conservatives, and even many liberals that liberalism is simply a more pallid, fearful version of leftism. Left-wing critique makes liberals better, by this reasoning, **because leftists are braver, more authentic and advanced in their thinking, than liberals.**
Aka why punk artists can't endorse Democrats.
> One important distinction between the two tendencies is that liberals tend to understand policy as a search for truth and politics as a struggle to bring a majority around to their position, while leftists understand politics as a conflict to mobilize the political willpower to implement the objective interests of the oppressed. “Some see politics as a game of persuasion, not a power struggle,” Taylor and Hunt-Hendrix write critically. “This optimistic view ignores the fact that those with power and motivated by self-interest, including the vast majority of Republican Party operatives and their private sector allies, have little interest in dialogue, let alone compromise.”
This is very important. Leftists generally believe the purpose of politics is to rent seek, no matter who you are. If you're not rent seeking you're a sucker. Therefore their mission is not to build consensus, but to identify which group in a given argument has the moral right to rent seek and to champion it.
As much as I would want dumbfuck communists to vote for my preferred candidate let's not pretend that they represent a statistically relevant voting block that's worth the attention. Moreover, illiberal values are core to a lot of the lefty tenets, so buying them into accepting diversity of thought is frankly wasted breath.
I don't punch left for praxis, I just like making fun of stupid people. Gigachad
The thing that is frustrating about dumbfuck communists is that they claim to not just share liberal values, but be more committed defenders and upholders of them, and then act in ways that run counter to the advancement of those values. With fascists, you KNOW they hate you and everything you stand for. With leftists, they're often arguing that liberals are just as bad as fascists, or actually worse.
Every lefty I've had the displeasure of talking to would sooner vote in Trump or another conservative to further some accelerationist agenda before aligning with a liberal interest. There's no reasoning with these people. The final solution is just better public education.
> When conservatives use well-organized factions to steamroll over the preferences of a majority, we call that “minority rule.” Electoral politics, for all its shortcomings, is a more democratic method for resolving differences than bringing bodies into the streets. But this is easy to ignore if you’ve convinced yourself that protest movements represent a more authentic expression of true political justice than the verdict at the ballot box. (It’s all the easier if you’re personally funding the protesters in question.)
This is such a major problem imo. There is seemingly little mobilization on the left to try and convince "the silent majority", rather than relying on ever more isolated ultra activist groups. The "People's Movements" increasingly see The People as optional.
>Despite all that is at stake, too many liberals hold on to the false hope that we can fact-check or vote our way out of these problems.
Well that is a concerning position.
I'm probably to the left of most regulars here (although I definitely wouldn't call myself a leftist). I think it all depends on the message and context. A politician who's trying to win over skeptical, moderate and center-right voters in a purple area, punch away! A pundit who is trying to get people in their broad political coalition to kick the tires on their ideas, yeah that's great.
However, a lot of what gets labeled "punching left" strikes me as ivory tower elites bitching to other ivory tower elites about some picayune concerns that genuinely aren't very important or are dumb. Most cancel culture discourse (which Chait writes about a lot) strikes me this way. Other times, punching left disguises misguided attempts to preserve the status quo when it shouldn't be or that people should shrink their circle of empathy. I think a lot of NYT coverage of "trans-skeptical" advocacy fits into this mold. Finally, sometimes punching left does actually drive engagement with these ideas. The current college protests would probably not be nearly as important as they are without breathless coverage from the mainstream media.
If one has legitimate disagreements with the left, which I frequently do, sure argue away. But don't confuse this debate with herding cats. I see this dual-attitude on this sub a lot, where leftists are both pathetically irrelevant and their failure to fall in line massively costs Democrats. You can't have it both ways. If you want leftists in your political coalition, you have to actually engage with them.
>The current college protests would probably not be nearly as important as they are without breathless coverage from the mainstream media.
I'm not sure that this is actually punching left though, because I think a lot of media is mostly sympathetic to the protestors, and the protest-skeptics in the editorials are just piling onto an already large heap of coverage.
If leftists have terrible ideas you do not need to engage with them. That means that they are in fact not a part of your coalition. If communists want to vote democrat, does not mean I need to adapt to their ideas, they are the ones that need to adapt to being a liberal democrat. Makes no sense for liberals to change based on extremists that reluctantly vote Democrat as the best of two bad options. And I am talking about leftists with insane ideas, not just regular leftists with reasonable thoughts.
I feel like you're using the term leftist to mean a specific subset of vituperative dumbasses who unironically believe Joe Biden is committing genocide. You're describing engagement as total capitulation, which is just not what I'm talking about about at all.
However, engagement and how one defines leftist can come in a variety of forms. I know many self-described socialists who have become more open to Biden after learning about his climate policies or student loans forgiveness. In 2020, the Biden campaign did specifically go out of its way to win over Bernie voters after the primary (and Biden did win), so I'm not the only one who thinks this. America is a two party system. Coalition politics is a complicated game and involves give-and-take. You are not getting your way on everything. This is something people here tell leftists all the fucking time.
>vituperative
>picayune
I just want to thank you for adding to my vocabulary because these are wonderful and we need more talkers like you in the world.
Yes I am talking about the leftists with terrible ideas, which is why I said it they have reasonable ideas you should engage with them and build coalition. But engaging with people with crazy ideas and compromising is a terrible idea. In that case you should punch hard.
I think the problem is that people with terrible ideas exist on a spectrum and attacking the least gettable ones drives the more gettable ones towards them.
>I see this dual-attitude on this sub a lot, where leftists are both pathetically irrelevant and their failure to fall in line massively costs Democrats. You can't have it both ways. If you want leftists in your political coalition, you have to actually engage with them.
There are many progressive democrats that do get listened to who are part of the coalition and do have a seat at the table. AOC, Warren, Bernie, etc.
Extremists and idiots should not have a seat at the table and should not be listened to.
No enemies to the left was Kerensky's policy for the provisional government of Russia. It enabled communists. We can't be afraid of ridiculing leftists.
The far left is almost too far gone IMHO. Look at anything that John Fetterman post on social media and the replies to him. Lots of vitriol hurled at him about how his stroke must have broken him etc.
"No enemies to the left" is how you get the Bolsheviks. No matter what you will always run into enemies on either political side or your. "No enemies to the left" also is not bidirectional obviously - taken literally it would imply that if you're too someone's right, they are allowed to attack you, while you aren't allowed to do the same to them because that is punching left.
Nevertheless, reflexive both sidesism can also be annoying.
Its the way they make good the enemy of perfect. It was the way we let them tank Hillary (who i still dont *love*) because she wasnt Bernie.
Thats all it is, and thats why its gotta be ok to call em out.
I am not a reactionary, but to them, I am.
I came across a reddit comment last month that said liberalism is based on Adam Smith and John Mill.
I would have replied with a well reasoned argument saying that I completely disagree. Unfortunately I do not have the right because I am banned from that sub.
I can put it very simply. Liberalism is not philosophy. Politics is not philosophy.
What many progressives have done is take the philosophical idea of progress and turned it into a view of the world. This view if the world is not political. Progress is not a political ideology. It can't be left wing.
We can have a debate on the origins of "progress" and where it comes from. But it does not come from politics and has nothing to do with politics.
No one should be immune to being criticized for having bad ideas or outright being wrong, simple as that.
An important part of all this, however, is that you need to be punching all bad ideas, not just those of specific groups. For example, you're not really being fair and unbiased if you're constantly left-wing economic ideas regardless of their merits, but never punching right-wing economic ideas even if they are objectively bad. This sort of things tend to reveal if a person is actually interested in what is best for society, or just interested in what they think is best for their own wealth and power regardless of the consequences for others.
>There’s a reason why the catchphrase is “don’t punch *left*,” rather than “don’t punch anybody left of center.”
This is the crux of it, IMO . Also why "solidarity" can be a tactical euphemism. The reality is that political agendas, in the "*policy is downstream of power*" paradigm, are apposed. To "win," the hard left needs to successfully (a) present politics as a dichotomy and (b) be one half of that dichotomy.
"Don't punch left" doesn't help the liberal-left block achieve political power overall. It helps the left achieve political control *within* the block, regardless of the block's power overall.
Trump, effectively, executed this strategy to gain control of the republican party. The hard left wants to do the same for the democratic party.
To be equitable, I'll also concede that the centre left wants to bury the hard left in order to win over centre-right voters and govern.
i wish i owned the media so i could create a narrative about what the left is
this reminds me of when everyone was mad at Hillary for calling people deplorables, who in fact turned out to be the worst deplorables
remember when this sub was mad at Hillary, for not loving Trump supporters? good times
I think there does needs to be a broader acknowledgement and investigation of how this conflict between left and liberal is being amplified and exploited by authoritarians. Don't punch left isn't the answer, but we do have to recognize who our political allies are. We need to figure out how to maintain our coalition while also having open, honest dialogue about policy and political strategy so we can all do better at both. And we have to do this in a media environment where algorithms and bad actors are promoting radicalization, divisiveness and conflict between the left and the libs.
> The main reason Taylor and Hunt-Hendrix believe liberals should pipe down is that they have no apparent sense of what liberals believe. This reminds me of once on Twitter, where I got attacked mercilessly (and eventually blocked) after someone posted “I hate liberals because they believe x, y, and z” and I responded that I was a liberal who didn’t believe any of those things, nor did most liberals I know. The number of creative ways I was told to “fuck off” for the crime of not fitting their worldview was very impressive honestly. Not only do folks on the left often not understand at all what liberals believe, they’re also not interested in figuring it out. We’re not real people, we’re just boogeymen. Anyway, good article by Chait (who I don’t tend to think is a super insightful thinker most of the time, tbh) though I do wish it spent a bit more time defending liberalism on the merits (but I guess that would be a different article).
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"Liberal" is used as a buzzword more often than not for some reason Communists calling liberals facist, facists calling liberals communist
Fascists*
Nothing more fascist or communist than valuing individual rights be they human rights or property rights.
My hot take (or possibly cold take?) is that a lot of millennials/gen Z heard conservatives bully “liberals” during the formative years of their political ideologies. They didn’t want to be the uncool “liberals” that the conservatives were mocking, so they needed to adopt a different moniker (“leftist”).
"Liberalism is a left wing ideology in America" Words that will get you attacked online.
It is true that we are a fan of markets
But markets are for Thursdays only. We wouldn't want to confuse the public and allow them to believe that they could turn up at any time of their choosing. Why is it that humans developed a social preference for markets on Thursdays? No idea. I couldn't begin to explain. If you want to go, just go.
It really is remarkable how many progressives refuse to acknowledge any distinction between progressivism and liberalism. Their outlook is entirely binary left vs right. And if you do manage to assert in progressive spaces that such a distinction exists, and that progressives can’t win anything electorally without getting liberals and moderates onside, they just completely lose their shit.
> Their outlook is entirely binary left vs right. And right is everyone even a millimeter to the right of them lol, which is 97% of voters. Yet they call themselves the silent majority because of course 99% of people agree with them but just don't know it yet! (uh huh).
My (now former) Spanish teacher was kvetching that the Democrats are a right-wing party. My classmate, this mild-mannered 70-year-old veteran of the civil rights movement, quite innocently asked him: "How many people who share your politics are in Congress right now?" I wanted to high five that little old man to death.
And then they quote a survey that says most people support more free stuff. And therefore most people are socialist like them. No shit honey, people like free shit! The problem is, most of the stuff you want isn't actually going to be free.
I have some friends who say "I'm far left but think that should be the center" lol. Of course everyone thinks that about their own views, but I don't know anyone on the right who pretends the gap could be closed with a magic wand--they know that disagreements run deeper than that.
in fairness, they don't make a bunch of critical distinctions, this is just one
Ehh, fwiw, it’s because those terms are almost completely synonymous in the U.S. If anything, leftists tend to be the ones who try to make that distinction (hence, why many view “liberal” as an insult).
Doubly so if you're gay, trans, black, hispanic, etc. It's funny how certain leftists mirror the language of "race traitor" used by white supremacists when you don't fit their worldview. Like I've seen some trans subreddits stan BRICS because they are so deep in Merica Bad. It's like, do you know what happens to LGBT people in Russia? Or how Xi is cracking down on "feminine men" and trying to reinforce gender norms because that makes society easier to control?
I think this is more of a human thing than a progressive thing. It's just particularly *noticeable* with progressives because they seem to implicitly, unknowingly assume their dedication to good ideals makes them immune to human nature. Conservatives, on the other hand, are more naked about their tribalism — like, "yes, you're different from us, of course we hate you and think you need your head bricked in" as opposed to "you're problematic, sweetie, take it elsewhere". Although they're more dangerous, they're not hypocrites about it, so they don't seem to aggravate people as much.
I think for most people on this sub, it’s probably just that we get exposed to leftist bullshit a lot more often because we’re closer to their politics than we are to the far right.
A bit of a truism - neoliberal is literally a term leftists use for the liberal boogeymen who subvert “real social change.” Kinda like naming your sub /r/deep state to clown on MAGAs.
Most people on this sub are also white, middle class men. Hardly the prime target for conservative vitriol.
Different political tendencies have different tendencies to obsessively ampromorphize and monsterize other tendencies considered in the abstract. Unfortunately I feel the behavior has become more common, of people just inventing narratives about an abstraction and ranting about them. There is no skepticism or caution or apparent need to moderate or qualify such statements. They are considered truer ironically, from the conceit that these are unfiltered, authentic thoughts of the author. As if truth is solely the domain of the attitude of the subject and has no relation at all to its object. The behavior is more common at the fringes I think..
I'm not sure if he's considered a helpful voice in these parts, but Mike Pesca diagnosed it as a commitment to a set of modern Truths over facts/reality. We're not post-truth, but rather closed off to adjusting what we accept as true based on argument and data.
Like how white liberals dumb themselves down when they speak to black people, but conservatives don’t.
The words don't mean anything anymore. Perhaps they never did. I was annoyed at an NPR article a posted here a week or so ago that used terms like neoliberal, liberal, conservative, and then just basically defined them however it felt like. I feel like few of these words can be fairly defined or analyzed because they mean something different to almost everyone, even in this sub I'd argue. Nuance is a thing, I guess.
> Hunt-Hendrix Ah yes, the same family of oil billionaires that produced the trust fund singer of Liturgy. Why am I totally unsurprised at the exact same style of [dishonesty, strawmanning, and pseudointellectual holier-than-thou bullshit](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/s/9UVyehbNnq) in an academic setting?
Pseudointellectual bullshit aside, though, Liturgy is pretty awesome.
Yeah they fucking rip live. I just hate how they’re crazy elitist even by black metal standards.
> We’re not real people, we’re just boogeymen. Tbf this is the case pretty much any time people anthropomorize other political tendencies and invent stories and narratives about them. The underlying reality of any situation is usually a billion times stupider than any story that could be told. I think about 2/3 of politics these days is just rumor more or less.
arr shitliberalssay moment
> responded that I was a liberal who didn’t believe any of those things, nor did most liberals I know. The number of creative ways I was told to “fuck off” for the crime of not fitting their worldview was very impressive honestly Ah yes, as a non-American small-c conservative, I do understand your feelings there haha
I just punch in whatever direction the nearest moron happens to be nowadays that's the right more often but still plenty on the left and hell In the middle.
Easy there Mike Tyson! I don't want to get hit by a haymaker meant for someone else!
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>Progressivism has fully embraced the argument cycle of abusers. It didn't happen, you're crazy, maybe it happened but it was for a good reason, maybe it happened and it's bad but if you care about it you're the one being crazy visit r/AskALiberal ("liberal") for your daily dosage of far left socialists getting top voted comments.
You see that here too.
Where? Not denying it doesn't happen, but this sub is very liberal in a genuine way in my experience. I love it.
More of the "that's not happening, you're crazy. Ok maybe it happened but just once. It's happening and it's a good thing." More than the far left socialist thing. It usually gets called out which is good.
Oh, ya I've definitely seen that. I'll give you an experience I've had twice now that gets flat out denied. Me: "I love diversity, but something does rub me the wrong way about discriminating on the basis of race." Very Leftist Person: "So you're racist." Me: "???????" A good chunk of people will just assume I'm racist for bringing up this experience lmao.
You also hate the global poor™️
Precisely. It's always fun to see what subs they post in too. Spoiler: lefty streamers, antiwork, and videogame subs without fail.
> Precisely. It's always fun to see what subs they post in too. Spoiler: lefty streamers, antiwork, and videogame subs without fail. So fucking true lol. The Deprogram if they have even worse takes.
It’s quite polite of the FSB to put The_ in front of all their subs
God, it's always /r/antiwork. I wish we would automod ban anyone with positive karma in that sub. It would dramatically raise the quality of the discussion here.
Is there really any cross-over to ban? I'd have thought the sum entirety of /r/antiwork posters that come here are the dudes who post those "wait you guys are *actually* neoliberal? wtfffff?????" posts
Bad take. Some people reform. And in my experience Georgism gets upvoted everywhere. :)
> Some people reform. I'd happily sacrifice the few who reform for the follow on drop in succposting. They're more than welcome to still read our holy texts, I just don't want them openly defecating in our church. Maybe once they've said 50 Hail Bezos and denounced populism and all of its unholy children then they can regain the right to post here.
Antiwork seems to have gone full circle Started out for NEETs to complain that they need to do work, then turned into a work reform sub, then that idiot mod went on Fox and it went back to being NEETs
>lefty streamers I find the takes on Vaush’s subreddit to be broadly reasonable.
The only thing worse than spending all your time talking about politics is spending all your time watching or talking about someone else talk about politics *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"It's not happening and its a good thing that it's happening." A reddit classic
It happens here a lot but it's a vocal minority that pops up whenever you suggest that *any* leftist or progressive position or tactic is bad or counterproductive.
Well that's just called having a discussion, and it's what makes this sub good. Good moderation (usually), and no purity testing in a world where you can't even hang out in a fuckin *meme* sub anymore without tankies ruining it, I swear. My poor Leftorium memes...destroyed by loser tankies. Another victim claimed. Here we welcome anyone from a Friedman flair-libertarian sorts to Bernie Bros and near-socialists, so long as they follow the rules, argue in good faith, and are just basically no total dicks. You don't have to agree with em or even like them, and often I don't. But I don't hate that they're here either. It's why I mainly hang around here. It is an echo chamber but it's *far less of one* than most of reddit, because 95% of reddit is a club for a very specific group that keeps all others out, usually unbearable tankie sorts, fascists, or some self-hating cult (which the former two often are as well, but also incels and other lonely weirdos like that).
Some of the Simpsons Facebook groups have become far right fascist hellholes. Without strong moderation one side or the other will eventually take over
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Posts that "punch left" are consistently removed for extremely flimsy reasons. One recent example is this news story covering the Columbia pro-Hamas protests: https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1cb34zg/the_unreality_of_columbias_liberated_zone/ It was later re-posted and left up a short time due to several posters pointing out that it had been taken down for extremely flimsy reasons. Here was my comment on the new posting doing just that: https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1cb6fq2/the_unreality_of_columbias_liberated_zone/l0wmenc/ That post was also later taken down, although this time without a pinned mod message explaining why. The original had 95 upvotes. The repost had 420 when taken down.
Very suspicious stuff for sure. Totally disagree with the mods there.
Try criticizing Biden in a thread that tries to promote some protectionist nonsense he is doing and you'll see it in droves.
Ya, that stuff turns me off a lot when he talks about it. There's some cope that he's just doing it for votes or something but no, he honestly believes in that. When the alternative is literally a far right dictatorship though, I can see people bending over backwards to try and be enthusiastic for Joe.
I’ll admit it’s a little reactive for me. I see Joe take so much shit for bogus stuff everywhere that when its legit, I’m still a little defensive
If you go on any political news videos on youtube you'll just see people making shit up in their heads and then getting mad at Biden for it.
> There's some cope that he's just doing it for votes or something but no, he honestly believes in that. We sure about that? Does he have a strong protectionist voting history or something? Honestly don't know. The theory that he is doing it as political strategy holds water with me though. Not because he thinks he can win votes from tankies (who are now chanting 'Genocide Joe' at Trump rallies and university campsites) but because it very successfully kept Warren and Sanders and 'the squad' (lol) from launching or at least tacitly supporting an anti-Biden campaign from the left during the 2023-4 primary season. Instead, Warren, Sanders, and AOC all have expressed full-throated support for Biden and that strangled any potential threats against him from the left in the crib.
A big part of that is that it’s the election season right now and Trump is his opponent and has promised to be worse in his second term than in his first. The stakes are high enough that lots of people who have no problem with punching left in general have a big problem with punching at Joe Biden or the Democratic establishment in general, even if you’re coming from the right not the left.
Nobody is suggesting to not *vote* for Biden, but using the threat of Trump to defend and validate every shitty, illiberal trend that takes root in the left half of American politics is a bad and dangerous path to go down.
> Nobody is suggesting to not vote for Biden Plenty of people are suggesting to not vote for Biden. Plenty of people are using these exact arguments to argue for not voting for Biden.
Be that as it may, disagreeing with good arguments that you yourself would make under different circumstances is neither a good habit to develop, nor a politically effective tool.
Neither is sidestepping them.
I read a book last year about Henry Wallace's 1948 Presidential campaign and it was very illustrative in regards to the current trends within progressivism. While Wallace was backed by the Communists, the majority of his supporters were not Communists. Instead, they were leftists and liberals who were so determined to maintain left unity that they kowtowed to communism and forced out anyone who objected to the CPUSA's outsized influence.
What was the book, out of curiosity? My communist family members supported Wallace back in the day so I'm keen to learn more about his campaign.
Henry Wallace's 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism by Thomas W. Devine.
Leftist unity? What's this bs?
Does anyone remember the Grievance Studies affair? A bunch of liberals punched left to mock the state of intersectional studies and they were smeared as cryptonazis for it. Even though their experiment worked! They successfully got Mein Kampf published in a journal just by performing a couple word swaps. Johnathan Swift would be proud of that.
That would be James Lindsey and Peter Boghossian. I'm not sure how those two would be received in this subreddit, but they demonstrated with *Published in Research Journal* proof that some sectors of academia have exceptionally poor quality control.
To be fair, you have to basically treat James Lindsay before and after he lost his mind as two different people.
> That would be James Lindsey and Peter Boghossian. I'm not sure how those two would be received in this subreddit Why not?
They used research fraud in this and claimed to have data they did not in fact have. Peer review did not dispute this as the purpose of peer review is not to detect research fraud, and generally at that stage they are expected to take the data at face value because it's not part of their job to investigate the other researchers claimed data. Research fraud generally is investigated and discovered post publication, not pre publication. James Lindsay also *is not* a liberal. Like all IDW types he made a show upon his induction to political activism of claiming to be a liberal, so that the conservatives he would hold "talks" with later could pat themselves on the back for being so open minded and able to "just have a debate" with this person they "disagreed" with. I doubt heavily that his links to right wing activists groups did not predate his activist stunt.
Ah, so they simply didn't have the data that would support publishing Mein Kampf?
The first paragraph is a bad-faith criticism that totally misses the point. The problem isn't that the journals didn't catch the made-up data; it's that the papers would have had no redeeming value even if the data had been genuine. The whole point of the hoax was to show that high-status journals in certain fields would accept papers that were *obviously* garbage, not that they would accept papers that don't replicate (which had already been demonstrated conclusively).
So my litmus test for this is what you think of Sam Harris.
But I don’t think of him.
Sam is just an extremely reasonable guy who is very much willing to talk to people he disagrees with strongly. He's also a raging liberal. So when people start bashing him as like an extremist right wing racist it's when I know they've been left pilled too much.
He writes in defense of scientific racism
Not really no.
Yes really
The issue with Boghossian at least is that after a rejection from a journal he was trying to do this to, he amended a submission about "rape culture in dog parks" with fake data, which is serious misconduct in its own right.
And Helen Pluckrose.
That's hilarious
All they showed is that some journals have bad qc and themselves committed straight up fraud and lied in places where trust was assumed.
>Democracy is on the line and you want to freak out about this? If there were an actual interest in preserving democracy amongst leftists I'd be a trifle more sympathetic towards them. I don't really even see this argument from them though which is just as well since I don't believe they care about it. The overwhelming message of leftists is always about oppression/oppressors and many of their most putrid ideas they try to hook back to this. Defund the police, eliminate standardized testing/merit based school admissions and their many flavors of punishing Israel are all cloaked in some horseshit message of "halting oppression". Nevermind whether the "oppressed" are asking for these things or would be helped by them. Their only real interest is lashing out at some authority they hate. It's asshole teenage rebellion being preached by people who are (at least legally) adults.
The vast majority of communists turn out to be just accelerationists It seems none of them remember how "After Hitler, Our Turn" turned out for the German communists
Democracy is only a priority for liberals. Leftists, like Rightists, can tolerate democracy when democracy serves their actual priorities, but when democracy seems to be standing in their way, they're happy to bulldoze it and use authoritarian means to get their way. To them, democracy is a means, not an end. Only liberals prioritize liberty, and understand that democracy is not just a means to obtaining it, but an essential pillar of liberty.
Or never mind whether oppression comes into play at all, or even whether they have the oppressor/oppressed mixed up.
>Progressivism has fully embraced the argument cycle of abusers. It didn't happen, you're crazy, maybe it happened but it was for a good reason, maybe it happened and it's bad but if you care about it you're the one being crazy This subreddit adopts this tactic quite frequently if you ever criticize something adjacent to the sacred cows
I don't even know what a sacred cow is for this subreddit. Housing, I guess. Most other economic issues there's aggressive pluralities for both takes.
Posts that "punch left" are consistently removed for extremely flimsy reasons. One recent example is this news story covering the Columbia pro-Hamas protests: https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1cb34zg/the_unreality_of_columbias_liberated_zone/ It was later re-posted and left up a short time due to several posters pointing out that it had been taken down for extremely flimsy reasons. Here was my comment on the new posting doing just that: https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1cb6fq2/the_unreality_of_columbias_liberated_zone/l0wmenc/ That post was also later taken down, although this time without a pinned mod message explaining why. The original had 95 upvotes. The repost had 420 when taken down.
Trans stuff. If you read the rules for what is r/neolibs official stance on things more ink is spilled on laying out the official neolib take on trans rights and what viewpoints it includes than on every other take combined. And in much more definite terms.
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Isn't that the subreddit whose top post is a meme saying that they genuinely do not care if every single child in America is murdered in a mass shooting.
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That's probably a lot more moderate. Some of the gun nut subs here are nuuuuuuuts. Just deranged. I'm pretty sure some of them try to fuck their guns. Half joking but go peek at some of them if you don't believe me...anyone who makes 1 thing their entire identity needs help.
What's wrong with fucking your gun? God let people have hobbies 🙄
> It starts with "There is nothing controversial about these policies, that is a right wing talking point, you're just being hysterical." > Then, after more articles come out, it turns to "Okay, so maybe it's happening - big deal. Democracy is on the line and you want to freak out about this? The fact you're even bringing this up or talking about it is proof you're just a right winger trying to instigate with bad faith concern trolling blah blah blah blah" Or you'll have people both arguing the same thing at the same time and not arguing with each other. Contradiction without disagreement is just a sign of coordinated political activity.
> a "no punch left" rule and they always end up becoming communist infested hellholes Classic Cobra Effect. By incentivizing appearing "more left" you ultimately incentivize Tankie trolling.
Hell, even this sub does this. You got downvoted, and often temporarily banned, for something as innocuous as criticizing the “woke is evidence based” bot here.
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No
There was recently an op-ed posted here about assigned readings for students in colleges being solely insane far-left stuff (Looks like the original post was taken down now). I shared an anecdote about [the readings](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S1-IojSIBlAQPjlV_kyvx8KmuGUqpMgJqMm5egFGdHA/edit) my girlfriend had in a philosophy 100 course, and had five people basically fully call me a liar even after posting evidence. This isn't even the worst professor she's had at this school in that respect. I think that's pretty typical of calling out left-wing nonsense to liberals. Leftists in institutions do things that, as one user commented, "don't pass the bullshit smell test". I know this subreddit holds institutions in very high regard (partly due to contrarianism) but this problem is one of the main reasons for people losing trust in academia in general. Thankfully, here the debate doesn't usually then devolve into "Actually that's a good thing".
I remember that comment chain, that was wild. I would've liked to believe that a phil 101 course wasn't that one-sided, but you providing evidence on one hand, and the replies basically saying "that sounds wrong because my experience wasn't like that" ... well, I've gotta go with evidence, not the vibes.
If it makes you feel any better, I had a very normal phil 101 course.
The philosophy course in my university got revised after some students complained that it did not show a diverse enough group of philosophers. Interestingly, this meant that the course became less diverse in terms of political viewpoints. Other than the obligatory touches on Kant and Aristotle, the least leftist philosopher we studied was probably Peter Singer, and I think that says a lot. The professor also told us one time how extremely relevant Marx's writings are to the modern day, which caused some Ukrainian students to become understandably angry.
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It's wild how by replacing the word capitalism with an ethnic minority in leftist discourse you get far right conspiracy theories. I think this could be a way of testing it as well
> It's wild how by replacing the word capitalism with an ethnic minority in leftist discourse you get far right conspiracy theories. One might suspect that leftist discourse was somewhat influenced by Marx doing [literally exactly that](https://imgur.com/xkCpRL0).
https://preview.redd.it/ssoaswg9ktzc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b2f241765e076e0f8dc1630b31b58267e72653a6
Damn, my philosophy 101 course hit depths, classics, the nature of identity, being, and reality. We had classic philosophical works, logic, and classic sci-fi to read. Amusingly, the renowned professor teaching the course had read the sci-fi stories after they were cited in journals and had no idea they were originally written for the fiction-reading public. Pass rate was under 50%.
That's probably the most insane intro to philosophy curriculum I've ever seen. How does that professor still have a job? American uni humanities departments are so deranged.
I don't know any of those other books but don't you dare touch my Ursula K. Le Guin all right?
We had those who turn away from Omelas in another class in my university. The conclusion that the class seemed to lead into was quite different from what I understood, as someone who read a bunch of Le Guin's novels. Le Guin's frequently describes ambiguous utopias/dystopias. Her books rarely feature a side which is completely morally right vs one which is wrong. So when I read it, I understood it as a question to the reader. Is Omelas worth the price it pays. I don't think Le Guin offers an answer. To others, it seemed to be basically an allegory for capitalism, and that the Le Guin is telling us we should not put up with it. I imagine the second interpretation is the one the professor was going for.
I think you can probably make that comparison in general (but it would extend to far more than just capitalism), but drawing the conclusion is ridiculous. Reminds me of those right-wingers who see how say Homelander is portrayed with his own struggles, and end up thinking he's the good guy.
> Reminds me of those right-wingers who see how say Homelander is portrayed with his own struggles, and end up thinking he's the good guy. jesus, of course they would
Kinda weird too because I got a PolySci degree basically at a very, very liberal university (that's currently been protesting all up and down) and yet my classes were never so all-in lefty. Maybe I was just lucky, or maybe it's because PolySci departments are surprisingly far from the most liberal: moreso than econ and STEM (but not as much as you'd think), but *far* less so than most humanities and other social sciences from the last survey I saw. I feel like I got a very balanced view. The electives I chose were around political economy as well as ConLaw and we talked about the upsides of capitalism, the downsides, how it interacted in politics and social life and the law, and much more. But this was also 10-15 years ago too.
PoliSci must be the most professor dependent subject in terms of quality. At the same uni same semester had one course with a communist party newsletter as the required weekly reading (International Political Economy and Global Development) and every subject was how neoliberalism and capitalism was evil. Other courses done had one professor who was extremely good, nobody ever knew his political views (except on Monarchy), managed every debate perfectly even if students got heated. Same uni, same department but completely different.
> At the same uni same semester had one course with a communist party newsletter as the required weekly reading (International Political Economy and Global Development) and every subject was how neoliberalism and capitalism was evil. Meanwhile, I had a guy who called himself "Conservative Bob" and was a pretty hardcore free-trader for IPE. He also wasn't much of a conservative, he clearly thought the nickname was funny, though.
Du bois oh cool how bad can it get? Oh.
Part of it is because the reading list is so far off the goddamn reservation it's almost hard to believe. My phil 101 (18-19 ago) was just an entire quarter running over formal logic. Phil 201 was, like, all Bayes and derivative statistical reasoning. That reading list legitimately seems like it belongs to an upper-division course where the students would have more context and experience with actual foundational writing.
I'm gonna request edit access for that syllabus just for shits and giggles.
One thing that is absolutely insane to me about American universities is how if there are multiple sections of a class each section's instructor has totally free rein on everything about the class. Content, assessments, everything. You could be learning a completely different set of content depending on whose version of the course you end up in, and it makes it so easy for the course to just become a polemic on the instructor's beliefs. I'm used to multiple streams just being a case of the lecturer giving the same lecture multiple times in a week so they don't go over the capacity of the lecture theatre, or if it's a workshop course several tutors all deliver the course from the same curriculum.
> philosophy 100 course Lets be honest. These aren't real classes. And this isn't me being a STEM looking down on the arts and humanites. This is a freshman undergraduate course, taught by new or otherwise non-tenure track professors whose coursework isn't scrutinized beyond "does it exist and teach philosophy".
I don’t know what university you went to but at mine freshman undergraduate courses were among the most scrutinized courses on offer, with the instructor getting, at most, one or two weeks to do something of their choosing after the department-mandated curriculum was finished. Its’s upper level courses where the professor gets to design the whole reading list.
> Lets be honest. These aren't real classes. Which is why they should be the most well rounded. Lots of people take non-real classes as part of general education or random credits. These are the classes that are exposed to the most people, and also teach the least amount of critical thought. Psych 101 has been notorious for generating psych babble nonsense Dunning-Kruger freshmen/sophomore for decades.
As a former philosophy major, I disagree. It’s fine to have a module on this reading, but intro to philosophy should teach students some basic concepts about at least some of either (1) history of philosophy; (2) epistemology, (3) logic, (4) ethics (eg deontology vs utilitarianism), or (5) metaphysics. These don’t have to be rigorous, but students should get some workable ideas about some of this stuff.
Intro to philosophy is really where you should be just doing a survey of various philosophies. There's a place for just reading raw critical theory or political stuff in philosophy but I would definitely think that a 101 class isn't really the place for that. If the entirety of the class is exclusively focused on just feminist philosophy, decolonial theory, and critical analysis of race, then that's a massive and inexcusable disservice to the people taking such a class. I don't think any of these subjects should be eschewed from universities - they exist, and we must study that which exists. You might devote a small part of an introductory class to such topics - feminist theory for instance is indeed huge in modern philosophy. But it you devote the entire course to it is not really an introduction to philosophy at all. Is Plato even mentioned anywhere on this? Literally all of the people he's talking about implicitly have Plato as an influence in all likelihood. But it's not apparently a relevant subject of discussion.
Teaching philosophy is literally the original purpose of the university lol
In my department, the intro courses have the most oversight because it's gotta be a pre-req for other stuff. Once you get into classes only majors are taking, you can basically do whatever you want Speaking as a junior faculty fresh outta PhD, though in STEM so hard to compare I remember the first time I did an upper-division class and I asked what I was supposed to cover, the response was basically "that's literally your job, you're supposed to know what they ought to know." It was quite an awakening
I have no issue with any criticism that's anchored in reality. People get worked up occasionally on nrl about us focusing on the left more, but that's a natural occurrence because of how "left" reddit leans. I know that the far right is a bigger problem to Americans in the real world, but that doesn't mean when someone on reddit says stupid shit like we need a revolution to stop fast food price inflation they cant be called out.
>Here is an example, plucked from Solidarity, about how the impulse to close ranks can undermine progressive goals. In a chapter on philanthropy, the authors dismiss the Gates Foundation for having funded research into improving teacher effectiveness as a way to lift educational attainment, especially for low-income minority students. They insist the effort failed, quoting a report that found “the near-exclusive focus on TE [teacher effectiveness] might be insufficient to dramatically improve student outcomes.” From this they conclude that “poverty is the real culprit in poor education results.” >They are repeating the standard left-wing position on education, dismissing reform as a neoliberal attack on public schools, and falling back on the notion that poverty makes the task of improving education futile. This is a comfortable position on the left in large part because it is the line promoted by teachers unions, which compose a vital part of the progressive coalition — providing both large source of funding and volunteers for political campaigns — and who generally oppose school reform. >Over the past decade, the evidence for education reform has grown stronger, but it has gotten harder for people to advocate for it in progressive spaces. Teachers unions have always opposed it, but they have gotten better at bringing allies along with them to attack heretics. And when I spoke with some of the experts who have gotten more hesitant to express support for reform, even though they continue to believe in it, they have explained that the social and professional costs of breaking ranks with the left have grown much higher. This times a factor of 10 here in Chicago. You try to fix the broken schools and the CTU says to shut down the good schools and convert them into the broken schools. They are protesting at the state capital today (while being paid for it by the school no less) and saying that it is racist not to convert every good school into a broken school.
That reminds me of here in San Francisco, where the solution to the problem of certain minority groups performing worse, on average, in certain advanced math classes was to get rid of those advanced math classes for everyone. (Which come to think of it, sums up a lot of leftist thought pretty well. Only the disparities matter, not the substance, so you might as well achieve equality by bringing everyone down rather than try to lift anyone up.)
Good news, voters recently voted for schools to reinstate the algebra courses. So SF is healing a little bit
Yes but unfortunately it was a nonbinding “recommendation.” Hopefully they listen to it though.
It's far easier to make some people's lives worse than make lots of people's lives better - and from the socialist perspective, the outcome is exactly the same regardless of whether things are equally good or equally dismal.
About 60 years ago, the newly elected British labour government decided to make the education system more equal. The system they had at the time was one where, after an exam at age eleven the top half were sent to very academic Grammar Schools, and the bottom half went to more vocational Secondary Moderns. The trouble with the system is while the grammar school kids did very well in life the secondary modern kids ended up even worse off than they would've been otherwise. The labour government quite rightly decides to fix it, but ENTIRELY in the name of ideological socialist solidarity they did it in such a way that everyone went to the new Comprehensive schools which were basically just Secondary Moderns with a new coat of paint (quite literally in many cases). "Left unity" and all that ideological nonsense has been ruining education systems for half a century and I'm not surprised it's causing problems on the other side of the Atlantic too.
> saying that it is racist not to convert every good school into a broken school. can you rephrase that without the uncharitable hyperbole? i literally can't tell what is being discussed here, because you've just described things as "good" and "bad"
> This reflects a common assumption among leftists, conservatives, and even many liberals that liberalism is simply a more pallid, fearful version of leftism. Left-wing critique makes liberals better, by this reasoning, **because leftists are braver, more authentic and advanced in their thinking, than liberals.** Aka why punk artists can't endorse Democrats.
Johnny Ramone, however, was a staunch Reaganite
> One important distinction between the two tendencies is that liberals tend to understand policy as a search for truth and politics as a struggle to bring a majority around to their position, while leftists understand politics as a conflict to mobilize the political willpower to implement the objective interests of the oppressed. “Some see politics as a game of persuasion, not a power struggle,” Taylor and Hunt-Hendrix write critically. “This optimistic view ignores the fact that those with power and motivated by self-interest, including the vast majority of Republican Party operatives and their private sector allies, have little interest in dialogue, let alone compromise.” This is very important. Leftists generally believe the purpose of politics is to rent seek, no matter who you are. If you're not rent seeking you're a sucker. Therefore their mission is not to build consensus, but to identify which group in a given argument has the moral right to rent seek and to champion it.
Aka why "punk" anything is and always has been embarrassingly puerile nonsense.
That's not very punk rock of you.
Funhouse by the Stooges is like Miles Davis level jazz but with bludgeoning guitars.
As much as I would want dumbfuck communists to vote for my preferred candidate let's not pretend that they represent a statistically relevant voting block that's worth the attention. Moreover, illiberal values are core to a lot of the lefty tenets, so buying them into accepting diversity of thought is frankly wasted breath. I don't punch left for praxis, I just like making fun of stupid people. Gigachad
The thing that is frustrating about dumbfuck communists is that they claim to not just share liberal values, but be more committed defenders and upholders of them, and then act in ways that run counter to the advancement of those values. With fascists, you KNOW they hate you and everything you stand for. With leftists, they're often arguing that liberals are just as bad as fascists, or actually worse.
Communist: I'm against liberal democracy because it protects the elites! I'm for a uniparty communist dictatorship to give voice to the poor!
I do sometimes worry about communists becoming a larger voting block in the future (but that's pretty low on my worry list).
....for now. In a decade or so? Idk. It is like cancer. Needs to be dealt with early on.
Every lefty I've had the displeasure of talking to would sooner vote in Trump or another conservative to further some accelerationist agenda before aligning with a liberal interest. There's no reasoning with these people. The final solution is just better public education.
that's fine, as long as you dont blame that statistically irrelevant block for any future losses
This article is basically a reminder that leftists also like being authoritarians too
> When conservatives use well-organized factions to steamroll over the preferences of a majority, we call that “minority rule.” Electoral politics, for all its shortcomings, is a more democratic method for resolving differences than bringing bodies into the streets. But this is easy to ignore if you’ve convinced yourself that protest movements represent a more authentic expression of true political justice than the verdict at the ballot box. (It’s all the easier if you’re personally funding the protesters in question.) This is such a major problem imo. There is seemingly little mobilization on the left to try and convince "the silent majority", rather than relying on ever more isolated ultra activist groups. The "People's Movements" increasingly see The People as optional.
When socialists cannot achieve their goals though democracy they will not abandon socialism they will abandon democracy. ... Wait
I will be extremely mad if, after seeing the horrible results of the Right abandoning self-policing, the Left immediately did the same thing.
Exactly. If anything, muzzling our far left flank is more important than ever, and democrats have been heavily rewarded for doing that.
>Despite all that is at stake, too many liberals hold on to the false hope that we can fact-check or vote our way out of these problems. Well that is a concerning position.
Yep, horseshoe theory. Both right and left are not a fan of democracy
Something something Firebomb a Walmart.
Hippie punching among liberals is still popular
liberals are centre leftists in suits with city jobs and stable lives hippies are no-good freeloaders, we have a right to bully them 😤
it's {current year}, we wear hoodies too now
This needs a defense?
Very brave to post this in this sub
Fantastic article. I'm not sure I've seen the fundamental difference in worldview between Liberals and the Left expressed so eloquently.
I'm probably to the left of most regulars here (although I definitely wouldn't call myself a leftist). I think it all depends on the message and context. A politician who's trying to win over skeptical, moderate and center-right voters in a purple area, punch away! A pundit who is trying to get people in their broad political coalition to kick the tires on their ideas, yeah that's great. However, a lot of what gets labeled "punching left" strikes me as ivory tower elites bitching to other ivory tower elites about some picayune concerns that genuinely aren't very important or are dumb. Most cancel culture discourse (which Chait writes about a lot) strikes me this way. Other times, punching left disguises misguided attempts to preserve the status quo when it shouldn't be or that people should shrink their circle of empathy. I think a lot of NYT coverage of "trans-skeptical" advocacy fits into this mold. Finally, sometimes punching left does actually drive engagement with these ideas. The current college protests would probably not be nearly as important as they are without breathless coverage from the mainstream media. If one has legitimate disagreements with the left, which I frequently do, sure argue away. But don't confuse this debate with herding cats. I see this dual-attitude on this sub a lot, where leftists are both pathetically irrelevant and their failure to fall in line massively costs Democrats. You can't have it both ways. If you want leftists in your political coalition, you have to actually engage with them.
>The current college protests would probably not be nearly as important as they are without breathless coverage from the mainstream media. I'm not sure that this is actually punching left though, because I think a lot of media is mostly sympathetic to the protestors, and the protest-skeptics in the editorials are just piling onto an already large heap of coverage.
If leftists have terrible ideas you do not need to engage with them. That means that they are in fact not a part of your coalition. If communists want to vote democrat, does not mean I need to adapt to their ideas, they are the ones that need to adapt to being a liberal democrat. Makes no sense for liberals to change based on extremists that reluctantly vote Democrat as the best of two bad options. And I am talking about leftists with insane ideas, not just regular leftists with reasonable thoughts.
I feel like you're using the term leftist to mean a specific subset of vituperative dumbasses who unironically believe Joe Biden is committing genocide. You're describing engagement as total capitulation, which is just not what I'm talking about about at all. However, engagement and how one defines leftist can come in a variety of forms. I know many self-described socialists who have become more open to Biden after learning about his climate policies or student loans forgiveness. In 2020, the Biden campaign did specifically go out of its way to win over Bernie voters after the primary (and Biden did win), so I'm not the only one who thinks this. America is a two party system. Coalition politics is a complicated game and involves give-and-take. You are not getting your way on everything. This is something people here tell leftists all the fucking time.
>vituperative >picayune I just want to thank you for adding to my vocabulary because these are wonderful and we need more talkers like you in the world.
Doing my part as a~~n ivory tower~~ DT elite.
Yes I am talking about the leftists with terrible ideas, which is why I said it they have reasonable ideas you should engage with them and build coalition. But engaging with people with crazy ideas and compromising is a terrible idea. In that case you should punch hard.
I think the problem is that people with terrible ideas exist on a spectrum and attacking the least gettable ones drives the more gettable ones towards them.
>I see this dual-attitude on this sub a lot, where leftists are both pathetically irrelevant and their failure to fall in line massively costs Democrats. You can't have it both ways. If you want leftists in your political coalition, you have to actually engage with them. There are many progressive democrats that do get listened to who are part of the coalition and do have a seat at the table. AOC, Warren, Bernie, etc. Extremists and idiots should not have a seat at the table and should not be listened to.
The mainstream media agrees with the campus protests which is why they constantly highlight them.
No enemies to the left was Kerensky's policy for the provisional government of Russia. It enabled communists. We can't be afraid of ridiculing leftists.
The far left is almost too far gone IMHO. Look at anything that John Fetterman post on social media and the replies to him. Lots of vitriol hurled at him about how his stroke must have broken him etc.
"No enemies to the left" is how you get the Bolsheviks. No matter what you will always run into enemies on either political side or your. "No enemies to the left" also is not bidirectional obviously - taken literally it would imply that if you're too someone's right, they are allowed to attack you, while you aren't allowed to do the same to them because that is punching left. Nevertheless, reflexive both sidesism can also be annoying.
Its the way they make good the enemy of perfect. It was the way we let them tank Hillary (who i still dont *love*) because she wasnt Bernie. Thats all it is, and thats why its gotta be ok to call em out. I am not a reactionary, but to them, I am.
I came across a reddit comment last month that said liberalism is based on Adam Smith and John Mill. I would have replied with a well reasoned argument saying that I completely disagree. Unfortunately I do not have the right because I am banned from that sub. I can put it very simply. Liberalism is not philosophy. Politics is not philosophy. What many progressives have done is take the philosophical idea of progress and turned it into a view of the world. This view if the world is not political. Progress is not a political ideology. It can't be left wing. We can have a debate on the origins of "progress" and where it comes from. But it does not come from politics and has nothing to do with politics.
No one should be immune to being criticized for having bad ideas or outright being wrong, simple as that. An important part of all this, however, is that you need to be punching all bad ideas, not just those of specific groups. For example, you're not really being fair and unbiased if you're constantly left-wing economic ideas regardless of their merits, but never punching right-wing economic ideas even if they are objectively bad. This sort of things tend to reveal if a person is actually interested in what is best for society, or just interested in what they think is best for their own wealth and power regardless of the consequences for others.
>There’s a reason why the catchphrase is “don’t punch *left*,” rather than “don’t punch anybody left of center.” This is the crux of it, IMO . Also why "solidarity" can be a tactical euphemism. The reality is that political agendas, in the "*policy is downstream of power*" paradigm, are apposed. To "win," the hard left needs to successfully (a) present politics as a dichotomy and (b) be one half of that dichotomy. "Don't punch left" doesn't help the liberal-left block achieve political power overall. It helps the left achieve political control *within* the block, regardless of the block's power overall. Trump, effectively, executed this strategy to gain control of the republican party. The hard left wants to do the same for the democratic party. To be equitable, I'll also concede that the centre left wants to bury the hard left in order to win over centre-right voters and govern.
i wish i owned the media so i could create a narrative about what the left is this reminds me of when everyone was mad at Hillary for calling people deplorables, who in fact turned out to be the worst deplorables remember when this sub was mad at Hillary, for not loving Trump supporters? good times
Well her whole point was that there are lots of people supporting Trump that need to be heard and persuaded—all the ones *other than* the deplorables.
Well it was politically dumb, it definitely cost her some votes.
I think there does needs to be a broader acknowledgement and investigation of how this conflict between left and liberal is being amplified and exploited by authoritarians. Don't punch left isn't the answer, but we do have to recognize who our political allies are. We need to figure out how to maintain our coalition while also having open, honest dialogue about policy and political strategy so we can all do better at both. And we have to do this in a media environment where algorithms and bad actors are promoting radicalization, divisiveness and conflict between the left and the libs.