Whenever someone starts a sentence by referring to something across multiple decades, countries, and even the world as “the Left” you know you’re in for a wild ride.
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Demagogues invoke a weak (absurd) adversarial construct, they try to see what sticks. Hitler blamed Jews, Slavs, socialists, communists, artists... Putin invokes WW2 fascists. McCarthy hunted Reds.
But we live in an innovative new age.
Trumpists demonise all the pro-democracy anti-billionaires.
But aren't you just collapsing diverse points of view with a multitude of reasons for using such terminology into a single category that we can apparently make predictions about in the same manner you critique?
It's something that infuriates me because we're happy to break the right down into cohorts of conservatives, libertarians, neoliberals etc but for some reason people see it fit to use "the Left" as though it's anything other than a floating signifier
It doesn't make any sense strategically. It's pure unthinking habit. I think the only exception is when you're discussing what the Left ought to be (a universally emancipatory movement) but using it in terms of what the Left actually is right now is pointless
I don't fit anywhere in the left, right, middle or in-between sliding scale. There's no party for: hey, let's all just treat each other with love (even, or especially, our 'enemies').
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But we live in an innovative new age.
Trumpists demonise all the pro-democracy anti-billionaires.