Yugopnik made a good point on the term “Leftist” and how its so broad that it includes many different idealogies that are quite honestly conflicting, i.e. stalinists, anarchists, etc., so that it appears leftists are always fighting since they are all lumped into the same category.
I approve of any leftist as long as they are anti-authoritarian.
so that it appears leftists are always fighting since they are all lumped into the same category.
I always say it is because the left in general has its roots in old school liberal value of “think for yourself”. So there typically tends to be maverick attitude and in-fighting. The best example is the Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War; you have soc dems, communists and anarchists fighting together not just against fascists, but also themselves. The right, meanwhile value order and hierarchy, so they tend to easily set aside their differences. Again, the Spanish Civil War is the best example, with the Spanish Nationalists also composed of various factions with competing agenda, but managed to set aside their differences, which made it easier to do because they had a strong man figure to rally to.
For me, it makes much more sense to think about it all as pop culture. I’ll use America but this goes for any country.
The right leaning party represents pop culture. A dominant culture. The popular culture is American Apple pie and blue jeans with letter jackets.
The left represents everything outside the pop culture bubble. It’s a larger population as a whole, but they’re like little bubbles they all contain their own culture. Those cultures can conflict or merge and compliment each other. But they’re individually separate.
The pop culture is always feeling threatened. It needs to maintain the status quo. Every outside sub culture is trying to fight their way into the dominant culture.
So this is why the right leaning voters trend towards rejecting things like immigrants, minorities, LGQTB and often other sub groups that are not wildly accepted by the pop culture. This is also why the left leaning groups do not. They trend towards infighting about how to do things but overall they all focus efforts on taking status away from the pop culture.
When I view politics as a clash between pop culture and sub cultures, it makes so much of it make so much more sense.
Which is also why I believe this is useful because it highlights how to win. Pop culture is much more sensitive to culture jamming. If anyone remembers ‘yes men save the world’ they were buried a bit, but they managed to fuck with so many things in pretty smart ways. You can really start to see how to focus efforts on them with this context I think at least.
Its a bit of a complex topic, but in basic terms reactionary thinking is kneejerk reaction, what “feels right” without broader analysis. The popular surface level, like how people complain about trans people in sports cause it “feels unfair”, but when you look at the actual numbers there such a small section of out trans people in general, and even then they do pretty regular on average. Or how you here how believe all women will somehow make it “dangerous” for men dating, when in reality false accusations form less than one percent of cases, but one in four women experience assault. Whereas dialectical thinking is the thought that larger processes and symptoms influence outcomes, and one should take a step back and analyse the context and direct facts about something through critical thinking before coming to a conclusion. Like how study after study have proven that the number one factor contributing to a person engaging in violent crime is poverty, not just a person being born bad. Or how despite the narrative, immigrants commit crime at a lower percentage on average than natural born citizens. But since it dialecticalism is a much bigger analysis and uses a fair amount of hypothetical and philosophical thinking and you end up getting a fair amount of groups believing that their hypothetical analysis is best, such as you get with different philosophers.
Yugopnik made a good point on the term “Leftist” and how its so broad that it includes many different idealogies that are quite honestly conflicting, i.e. stalinists, anarchists, etc., so that it appears leftists are always fighting since they are all lumped into the same category.
I approve of any leftist as long as they are anti-authoritarian.
I always say it is because the left in general has its roots in old school liberal value of “think for yourself”. So there typically tends to be maverick attitude and in-fighting. The best example is the Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War; you have soc dems, communists and anarchists fighting together not just against fascists, but also themselves. The right, meanwhile value order and hierarchy, so they tend to easily set aside their differences. Again, the Spanish Civil War is the best example, with the Spanish Nationalists also composed of various factions with competing agenda, but managed to set aside their differences, which made it easier to do because they had a strong man figure to rally to.
For me, it makes much more sense to think about it all as pop culture. I’ll use America but this goes for any country.
The right leaning party represents pop culture. A dominant culture. The popular culture is American Apple pie and blue jeans with letter jackets.
The left represents everything outside the pop culture bubble. It’s a larger population as a whole, but they’re like little bubbles they all contain their own culture. Those cultures can conflict or merge and compliment each other. But they’re individually separate.
The pop culture is always feeling threatened. It needs to maintain the status quo. Every outside sub culture is trying to fight their way into the dominant culture.
So this is why the right leaning voters trend towards rejecting things like immigrants, minorities, LGQTB and often other sub groups that are not wildly accepted by the pop culture. This is also why the left leaning groups do not. They trend towards infighting about how to do things but overall they all focus efforts on taking status away from the pop culture.
When I view politics as a clash between pop culture and sub cultures, it makes so much of it make so much more sense.
Which is also why I believe this is useful because it highlights how to win. Pop culture is much more sensitive to culture jamming. If anyone remembers ‘yes men save the world’ they were buried a bit, but they managed to fuck with so many things in pretty smart ways. You can really start to see how to focus efforts on them with this context I think at least.
To me it sounds like you’re starting to broach on the concept of reactionary vs dialectical analysis
I’m not sure what that means. I’m interested though. Is it something you can explain here or is there some topics you can’t suggest I read up on
Its a bit of a complex topic, but in basic terms reactionary thinking is kneejerk reaction, what “feels right” without broader analysis. The popular surface level, like how people complain about trans people in sports cause it “feels unfair”, but when you look at the actual numbers there such a small section of out trans people in general, and even then they do pretty regular on average. Or how you here how believe all women will somehow make it “dangerous” for men dating, when in reality false accusations form less than one percent of cases, but one in four women experience assault. Whereas dialectical thinking is the thought that larger processes and symptoms influence outcomes, and one should take a step back and analyse the context and direct facts about something through critical thinking before coming to a conclusion. Like how study after study have proven that the number one factor contributing to a person engaging in violent crime is poverty, not just a person being born bad. Or how despite the narrative, immigrants commit crime at a lower percentage on average than natural born citizens. But since it dialecticalism is a much bigger analysis and uses a fair amount of hypothetical and philosophical thinking and you end up getting a fair amount of groups believing that their hypothetical analysis is best, such as you get with different philosophers.