Prediction: The Left is Going to Get Weirder, Not Less Weird, Over Time - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14816204
The right has always been the weirdos. The people who can't be accepted by modern society so they pine for a day when their views weren't considered stupid and backwards. The racists wish we could all be racist again. The Christians like to pretend evolution and global warming is a liberal conspiracy. The reganites and libertarians worship at the idol of the free market, their god which has never actually existed. Even the alt right trolls think we should Make America Great Again, apparently by dismantling the state apparatus that has enriched the majority of its members who fail to see their own privilege.

As weird as liberals can get, you can't really get weirder than racists, flat-earthers, Young Earth Christians (and other anti-evolution weirdos), Climate Change skeptics, fascists, free market radicals, tea party-ists, etc.
#14816206
It's amazing what a big issue it can be if someone uses the word "left" or "leftist" or "leftism" "improperly". It can also trigger thorough and never ending debates about whether who or what the real left are if someone considers anyone or him/herself a leftist "falsely". It's like a red rag to a bull. :lol:
Last edited by Beren on 18 Jun 2017 19:05, edited 1 time in total.
#14816210
LV-GUCCI-PRADA-FLEX wrote:As weird as liberals can get, you can't really get weirder than racists, flat-earthers, Young Earth Christians (and other anti-evolution weirdos), Climate Change skeptics, fascists, free market radicals, tea party-ists, etc.


that you can put all these diverse weirdos into one group called "right" and not see how arbitrary that is shows that "right" wing is as bogus a concept as "left" wing.

People keep calling me right wing for some reason but I am NOT:
- a racist
- a flat earther
- a christian
- a creationist
- a totalitarian

Karl Marx was a white supremacist, Stalin was a homophobe and an anti-semite.. Are they far right?
#14816218
SolarCross wrote: Stalin was a homophobe and an anti-semite. Are they far right?


Stalin was not an "anti-Semite", he was surrounded from his childhood by Jews, and his biological father was probably a Jew.
And there were no "homophiles" at the time he lived, there was a universal agreement that homosexuality is a mental illness.

BTW, Stalin was against Paedophilia, too, and in about 30 years he will be called by the leftists "wicked Paedophile-Hater", and nobody will remember any more the fact, that he was just a bloody murderer who murdered millions of Christians.
#14816239
SolarCross wrote:that you can put all these diverse weirdos into one group called "right" and not see how arbitrary that is shows that "right" wing is as bogus a concept as "left" wing.

People keep calling me right wing for some reason but I am NOT:
- a racist
- a flat earther
- a christian
- a creationist
- a totalitarian

We're comparing the fringes. And those aren't even really fringe beliefs. Besides, why make this about you?

Karl Marx was a white supremacist, Stalin was a homophobe and an anti-semite.. Are they far right?

Tu quoque fallacy. Anyway, I hate commies so I'm right there with you on that one.
#14816315
Beren wrote:"Liberal" should have been used instead of "Left" in the thread title.

"The Liberal is Going to Get Weirder, Not Less Weird, Over Time" - as talk radio hosts would most likely say.


Agreed.

But you'll note that the nutters instead decided to hold onto conspiracy.
#14816316
@LV-GUCCI-PRADA-FLEX
It was just an example. The trouble is we can't keep piling vast numbers of diverse and often unrelated philosophies and policy positions onto an abstract 2 dimensional scale and expect it to make any sense.

Any serious scientist will tell you that an single spatial axis can represent varying quantities of just one quality and not an infinite number of different qualities all at once.
#14816347
@SolarCross

I agree. We need a new way to organize political ideologies and policy positions. Thinking in terms of "Left" and "Right" only constrains our thinking and you can see this nowhere else but in America and the West which has devolved into such large amounts of rhetoric and post-modernism that it has basically become a word salad of subjectivity with the most used words being "Left" and "Right" used to describe ideologies that are not inherently "Left" or "Right" in fact at this point, "Left" and "Right" have no meaning. The terms are dead due to being stuffed with ideologies unrelated to them.
#14816357
It works fine as long as you use it. The reason that it has remained effective is because it is a rolling scale. That's why it's closing in on 300 years of consistent use.

It seems that a lot of right-wingers here are obsessed with trying to make it some kind of apparatus to fund their conspiracy-driven fantasies of being viewed as victims.

At its absolute most basic, it's a question of whether you want to expand privilege (left) or protect rights (right). Trotsky wanted to expand the rights of the basic worker, so he's to the left of Stalin who wanted to protect the gains of the Russian Revolution.

Both of them are well to the left of the United States, Canada, or wherever.

The problem is when people (virtually always right-wingers) try to make a boogey-man out of everybody except for them so they redefine "left" to mean, "everybody that hurts my feelings!" This means someone who played a homosexual character on TV, a general that supports a president they don't like, a Jewish comedian, any Muslim, people that read, someone that doesn't eat meat, an unemployed guy in a big city, a ruthless global banker, a kid with a Che poster in his dorm room, etc, etc, etc, etc.

When it's pointed out that this is an inconsistent hodgepodge of whatever with absolutely no narrative that in any way defines it as, "left," the answer is—"Well, then the rule-of-thumb that has been used by virtually everybody for half a millennium must be wrong—because my feelings can't be!"
#14816369
I think of the Cold War. Democracy and Capitalism on one side and communism on the other, both having powerful proponents with propaganda machines pushing their views and assimilating people/ideas to their camp. I dont believe politics is a dichotomy, but these two sides seemed to be flag poles where people rallied around and drew strength/ideas/allies from. With the cold war over and the crumbling, bumbling and abjugation by those past proponents, those flag poles are no longer dominating the world of politics. As other groups are able to (re)form and expand, we are now seeing more political variety.

From my POV, if an idea is socially progressive (more rights) or creates/expands social services it is usually called Left. Supporting the expansion of government, even if it isn't for the benefit of the people or is contrary to other traditionally left groups, is often called Leftist too. -I am aware this is foolish as it would make fascism a Left idea.. but that seems to be the popular perception. This is a rather broad swath of ideas that could be viewed as distinct and are (or could be) also called Left. Ideas that are conservative or hateful are usually called Right. If a conservative ideology has a lot of changes it usually looses the conservative moniker and thus leaves the "Right". Hate groups are usually lumped together with little or no attention to the variation and changes of their other defining ideas. This makes the Right rather narrow and exclusionary. So, of course the Left is getting more varied ("weirder") and will continue to do so.
#14816406
B0ycey wrote:Decky who considers the left to mean himself, Stalin, Marx, Scargill perhaps Corbyn and everything else is Right Wing.

Corbyn is right-wing too because he doesn't want to replace the UK with the British version of the USSR. There may be some thousands of leftists in the UK, as well as anywhere else, but Corbyn is definitely not one of them. :lol:
#14819296
Modern life is very weird to anyone who lived 200 years ago.

Japanese movies are very weird to me as a westener.

Heck, watching 1960s Star Trek is weird to me. Nowadays its so oddly backwards when it came to women and womens rights.

So, yeah, of course everything gets weird. Thats the way of the world. I fail to see the point of this discussion.
#14820823
SolarCross wrote:that you can put all these diverse weirdos into one group called "right" and not see how arbitrary that is shows that "right" wing is as bogus a concept as "left" wing.

People keep calling me right wing for some reason but I am NOT:
- a racist
- a flat earther
- a christian
- a creationist
- a totalitarian

Well right-wing is a lot easier to define because they tend to have one or more of these characteristics: reactionary, traditional, religious, conservative, or pro-ruling class (the rich, the aristocracy, the political institutions, etc). These are characteristics that are universal to right-wingers and can be generalized accross historical lines such that we can always imagine a conflict between those interests and the interests of people attempting to reform, innovate upon, discard, or otherwise update the institutions that right-wingers seek to protect.

So generally we can define these two sides as they work in opposition to each other. Depending on your point of view this can either be the ideological opposition or the material opposition (what interests that they actually serve as a consequence of material circumstances). Obviously there are those that say that this is a false opposition (notably post-modernists), but that is what I believe the basis of the left-right paradigm generally is agreed to stem from.

Obviously the more in favor of the status quo you are, the more to the center you will identify. Personally I don't think that my vision of what the world should be like is too radically different from the status quo, so I identify as center-left.

Karl Marx was a white supremacist, Stalin was a homophobe and an anti-semite.. Are they far right?

No, because you are not viewing them within the context of their time and place. You are plucking them out of their historical circumstances and asking what they would be considered as of today. In the context of what they were historically, there is no argument that they were both left-wing. Their opposition to capitalism was based upon their belief in socialist revolution. That alone will tell you they are not far right.

If you try to focus on a specific characteristic as belonging to one side or the other you will confuse yourself and fail to see the forrest for the trees. For instance, a right-winger and a left-winger can oppose Obamacare for two completely different reasons. Any one trait is not going to tell you if someone is left or right.
#14820928
LV-GUCCI-PRADA-FLEX wrote:ell right-wing is a lot easier to define because they tend to have one or more of these characteristics: reactionary, traditional, religious, conservative, or pro-ruling class (the rich, the aristocracy, the political institutions, etc). These are characteristics that are universal to right-wingers and can be generalized accross historical lines such that we can always imagine a conflict between those interests and the interests of people attempting to reform, innovate upon, discard, or otherwise update the institutions that right-wingers seek to protect.

Except that completely breaks down when the "left" are the traditional ruling class reacting against a popular "right wing" uprising EG: USSR vs the hungarian uprising...

Communism basically a religion like Scientology whilst at least some "right wing" people are true atheists rather than Christians or whatever.

Your criteria is garbage as it would mean Nikita Krushchev was right wing whilst all the basically pro-west plebs that revolted against the USSR's rulers were left wing.

How about the uprising in Venezuala now?
LV-GUCCI-PRADA-FLEX wrote:So generally we can define these two sides as they work in opposition to each other. Depending on your point of view this can either be the ideological opposition or the material opposition (what interests that they actually serve as a consequence of material circumstances). Obviously there are those that say that this is a false opposition (notably post-modernists), but that is what I believe the basis of the left-right paradigm generally is agreed to stem from.

There aren't two sides though, there are practically infinite sides.
LV-GUCCI-PRADA-FLEX wrote:Obviously the more in favor of the status quo you are, the more to the center you will identify. Personally I don't think that my vision of what the world should be like is too radically different from the status quo, so I identify as center-left.

Unless the status quo is Stalinism as it was in the USSR or Chavezism as it is in Venezuala now.. How about the status quo in Saudi Arabia now? Or Japan? Do any of these "centres" have anything in common with each other?
#14820938
SolarCross wrote:Except that completely breaks down when the "left" are the traditional ruling class reacting against a popular "right wing" uprising EG: USSR vs the hungarian uprising...


The left/right dynamic works because it is relative. Stalin was to the right of Trotsky, and it's not like he would have been clamoring to bring the czar back; it was just a relative term.

Incidentally, the Hungarian Revolution is a rather poor example to use as it was largely run by Marxists to the left of "The Stalinists," as conceived at the time. The Revolution was run by worker councils that elected Imre Nagy, a committed ideological Marxist, as their leader. It is very possible to see the Soviet Left Opposition platform in the actions of the Hungarians.

It is largely through Western revisionism that even Hungarians now tend to think that a Marxist member of a radical worker council demanding socialism wanted to be an American. I believe that in Khruschev Speaks, his position was that the Hungarian Revolution was dangerous exactly because it was socialist and a result of issues and mistake the party had made instead of an external or specifically nationalist movement.
#14820971
The Immortal Goon wrote:The left/right dynamic works because it is relative. Stalin was to the right of Trotsky, and it's not like he would have been clamoring to bring the czar back; it was just a relative term.

Incidentally, the Hungarian Revolution is a rather poor example to use as it was largely run by Marxists to the left of "The Stalinists," as conceived at the time. The Revolution was run by worker councils that elected Imre Nagy, a committed ideological Marxist, as their leader. It is very possible to see the Soviet Left Opposition platform in the actions of the Hungarians.

It is largely through Western revisionism that even Hungarians now tend to think that a Marxist member of a radical worker council demanding socialism wanted to be an American. I believe that in Khruschev Speaks, his position was that the Hungarian Revolution was dangerous exactly because it was socialist and a result of issues and mistake the party had made instead of an external or specifically nationalist movement.


The vast majority of Hungarians never chose communism, they had the bad luck to fall under the Soviet sphere of influence after WW2 and had their democratic government subverted by a practical coup d'etat by moscow loyalists. By the time of the 1956 uprising you are no one in politics unless you are at least nominally a communist, unsurprising then that anyone in Hungarian government that sided with the uprising would be somewhere on the "left".

From when the Hungary government was completely and overtly subverted by Moscow in 1949 until the 1956 uprising the people of Hungary endured brutal (and crazy) oppression by the communist authorities which is not such a long time that no one could remember how much better things were in the past. People may not have been trying to be Americans but they were revolting over becoming Soviets. It was in some sense a "reactionary" uprising as far as people were trying to undo "progress" and all the poverty, misery, craziness, political murders and official lying which is what "progress" entails.

For reference: Hungarian Revolution of 1956

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