I've been saying the left has a closet racist problem. Black people are finally starting to notice, why we aren't protesting with y'all. It's y'all turn to fix shit for once
from the 60's on! how many "collectives" were held together by the women making meals and educating the kids while the men thought big thoughts?
and I'm still angry at the hypocrisy behind Henry David Thoreau's mother brining him lunches and washing his clothes!
Sorry, but the "one-true-scottsman-fallacy" seems to be at work here. You can't say that someone isn't a member of whatever group because you don't like their behavior. This goes for "Christians", "Libertarians" & "Leftists".
I have seen so much misogyny & racism from all 3 groups & it sucks.
Maybe you are right. Or maybe we mean different groups. I don't care about self-attached labels. In my humble understanding of political literature, unless you care for all the oppressed groups you side with oppressors of some stripes.
I understand it more as a turn of phrase that’s penalized in formal debate settings, but in real life people kick others out of clubs and groups all the time 🤷🏻♀️
There were a lot of internet leftists that were willing to throw marginalized communities under the bus in the last election to prove their point, so they aren't immune from having this problem either unfortunately.
As a person who has known a non-binary political system (just D or R) I struggle with this. The two party system begets detachment and disengagement. I don't like to blame people who don't feel like they matter. Even though everyone can see the difference from an orange turd and a rainbow.
I want a better system too, but I also recognize it's going to take a lot of hard work outside of presidential election years to get things like third party candidates in local elections and fight for ranked choice voting before we can really make that change. In the meantime, we must do what we can
Parliamentary democracy in any of its iteration, whether multi-party or binary, will never solve the crises stemming from the liberal market economy system itself. Look at Europe. They are also in the dead-center of their own Trumpism even with strong multi-party systems.
Looking at Europe from Italy. Trumpism where? Orban is irrelevant outside Hungary. Brexit gave us ludicrous guys like Sunak or lasted-less-than-lettuce-Truss. Germany, France and Italy currently have laughable political leaders, but nowhere close to the moral, blatant corruption of Musk-Trump-GOP.
trump idolizes orban, so while his relevance may be scant in Europe, he's having yuge effects here. During trump's first term he invited Orban to the White House, where his thugs started a conflict with WH guards. They weren't made to apologize, nor did Orban. At the WH.
There's no perfect one. However, some keep people at bay (hence, they do not seem to be perceived as representing voters' needs/preferences) more than others. Two-party systems manage to draw interest from barely 50% of the eligible voters. I think that's an unmistakable failure.
Expecting leftists to vote for capitalist democrats proves you’re not an actual leftist. Stop blaming leftists when it’s the democrats that are the issue. If they listened to voters instead of donors more people may have voted for them.
Both can be an issue. The Democratic party is extremely disappointing, but it was clear that a vote for them was a vote for harm reduction over a Trump presidency. It was literally the Trolley problem. So yes I will blame leftists who sat out/voted third party, they do not get to spare their egos.
But harm reduction is the exact policy that gets us here. If your only standard is 'don't be as bad as your opponent' you don't have any real standard at all. Eventually, you're defending genocide cause it's the lesser evil vs 3 genocides and OH WAIT HERE WE ARE
What is the far left expecting democrats to vote as they perceive socialist?
Maybe it’s more like stop blaming center left. It’s no wonder we can’t have a country. We can’t get center left together, much less 3/4 of the population satisfied.
We’re done it’s over. Good luck with a donor-less party.
You mean liberals. Liberals were willing to do that. Liberals were the ones willing to throw Palestine under the bus. They didn't even meaningfully say anything when democrats abandoned trans and minority communities before even leaving office
I see so much sexism and anti LGBT hatred every single day, targeted at me and people I love, that I'm completely desensitised to it and am not offended at all. I think it's the only way to survive tbh. I almost feel in a privileged position that I can still be offended by racism
That they see these as mere symptoms or provisional distractions and not as primary contradictions is a failure of their thinking that has left them unequipped to confront this historical moment.
Sorry but you just can’t understand Trumpism if you’ve spent 40 years looking down your nose at dominance feminism like it’s something that got stuck to the bottom of your shoe.
These replies perfectly exemplify the racist-misogynistic, “yes, but, let’s file this under larger class struggle…”, anti-Black/anti-woman tone deaf, lip service that keeps (particularly white men) liberals screaming in echo chambers, while Black men + women remain mere objects in the ‘greater plan’
Honest question here - what is "dominance feminism"? Guessing . . . A feminism that is dominated by white voices and fails to include racism, colonialism, intersectionality in its analysis?
Racism and sexism help prop up capitalism by keeping the lower classes divided, but also some of their friends are racists and misogynists, so who's to say what the correct position is?
I'm horrified than anyone would distract us from the real problems facing the American proletariat: Ivy League educated white guys having to pay exorbitant rates for food delivery.
100% that racists and sexism needs to be addressed — i worry that the solutions we come up with to fix them are too identity to focused to resolve big ticket issues like inequity and class
one thing i still hold onto is years ago when a jacobin editor loudly mocked people on the page for thinking that racism was a problem worth grappling with
Agreed. They don’t see that all forms of bigotry based on perceived difference work to isolate us from others, to the advantage of an oligarchy united in greed and hate.
Even Marx said you can't reduce the status of African Americans to class dynamics. So when they smugly say "read theory" they do mean "after you," because they haven't.
Considering there is a five alarm ongoing fascist coup of our government, maybe we should handle that first and then swing back to sexism and racism. If they win, then the fight for those are already over. 🤷🏻♂️
Prioritizing the prevention of a fascist overthrow of the American government and a complete erasure of the constitution? Yeah guess what happens when those things aren't prevented to LGBT folks women people of color immigrants, anyone who's not a registered Republican. The big fight is the fight.
you mean stuff like a trans man being tortured to death for a month? you mean people sent to Guantánamo Concentration camp? you mean women dying in parking lots because they can't get lifesaving treatment? look around dude. it's already happening. I did my part trying to sound the alarm & get my
demographic to vote for democracy
it didn't fkng work. there's nothing more I can do except put my body on the line and I won't because I'm taking care of two households of vulnerable people
now I am focusing on giving local aid to my community and my people
Sorry about democracy. it's been nice
No one is saying abandon women, trans, minorities etc. But the message needs to be one that focuses on everyone and the current moment. You people constantly miss the forest for the trees. We have to be more fucking deliberate in the fights we pick! 🤦🏻♂️
And BTW? The way to communicate that you actually aren’t fighting for “everyone” and the “current moment” is not to throw your hand up super early and say you don’t care about me
What movement you started? The populist left was started by white guys in the industrial revolution. That's the movement that can fight fascism. Not whatever the fuck you think you are doing. White guys got you the minimum wage, 40 hour work week, and weekends. Just admit you hate White men.
You know what's crazy is people still thinking that men fighting and unaliving each other one time was THE moment that changed the world. And not years of peaceful service and meaningful change brought about by people like Dolores Huerta.
She is a wonderful woman. But to think labor rights were won through peaceful means is asanine and a complete rewrite of history. But way to try and work your agenda in there. 👍🏻
I have one question for you, what was your thoughts when Hillary said "breaking up the big banks won't end racism"? Did you "yas queen" or did you see it as the distraction it was from ending neoliberalism?
That’s fine to say but if we had dealt with it before we might not be in the middle of a coup, bc it’s a big chunk of why two or the last three candidates lost to trump
Fighting for equal rights for everyone seems like a great way to unite people to fight the fascists. The early labor rights movement hurt it's own cause bc they decided only certain ppl should benefit. It's not only extremely immoral & unjust, but strategically idiotic.
Is this uniting people? Feels like the classic Dem ploy of "you're supposed to fight for these groups while ignoring your own material interests like retirement, health care, welfare and better working conditions."
You missed my point. Telling and showing people who have not been treated equally that we are going to fight for them is how you unite people. Telling them that their fight should be on the backburner shows that their rights are less important to you.
Agreed. But focusing on that over everything else tells everyone else that they are less important. When you are bleeding out from a severed artery, you focus on stopping that before you deal with gout.
Either you believe everyone deserves equal rights or you don't.
Were trying to rally as many ppl as possible & the best (& moral) thing to do is to show ppl who've been told to wait for decades for equality that we're willing to take on that fight right now, not in another 5, 10, or 20 years. 1/
A huge, huge problem, which has been there since the 1920s. And we've been fighting that since the 20s. Two steps forward, one step back. I am morally offended by both. Many male leftists have no differences in those cases than the far-right.
I think there's nuance, I find bigotry abhorrent but I'd rather focus on why they believe that. Usually it's because they believe bullshit and it's the bullshit I have a problem with. Remove the bullshit, solve a lot of bigotry.
It is a problem and shouldn’t be ignored, but defeating the right by all costs takes precedence. We can’t create an echo chamber to cut the nose to spite the face.
ableism in particular because so many leftists can't even take it seriously, when it is the oppression guaranteed to impact us all. The right has churches to help disabled people (sometimes, often in bad ways, but still) the left has nothing.
The “it’s a class war only” (those intellectuals) vs “intersectionality and identity are important” argument is such a waste. I see no reason that both camps can understand and support the ideals of the other, while creating a stronger alloy as they blend their views. 1/2
It seems clear to me that the marxists can temper their single mindedness with acknowledgement and understanding of race, gender, and disability as important. & those speaking to the importance of these identities and experiences can find ways to strongly work for solidarity.
Could you please clarify who these left intellectuals are and give examples of how they are not morally offended. That would help to move the discussion on. I am sincerely asking for this help 🌻
They are problems *in themselves*. In some contexts class-based messaging might be more effective, but it needs to be paired with genuine moral outrage against racism, sexism, transphobia, and homophobia.
Specific examples? I think the left uses purity tests far more often and in doing so makes our tent far smaller than it should be. Even when views on some subjects are insane or racist. Kicking them out so they are forced into the right is counterproductive and a big part of how we got here.
This is the equivalent of calling an extremist a populist. Politics exists on a spectrum. Contemporary politics exists more on the original left/right. No one has time for up and down anymore. We've been hearded like cows to be on a single line.
What I don't get are the thousands of fellow travelers back in 2016 who got worked over by sexist, racist "Bernie bros" on social media and said "This is fine." People I knew for a fact cared about these issues if only because they're personally implicated.
I was in Russia years ago and struck by the extreme casual sexism & racism. A historian friend basically said that the Soviet theory was that if everyone was economically equal, that would also solve racism/sexism so no specific effort was needed for those. I think about that A LOT w some US left.
Many on the left side of left in the US actively admire the Soviet system. They are to young to have seen its outcomes on the nightly news or in person.
It was Marx who argued that class conflict is the basis for all oppression. However, I think he meant this as an argument against workers collective discriminating against out groups. I think he’d be appalled at leftists today using it to scold activists supporting equality for all.
Yep. Also, limiting the focus to *only* racism and sexism without addressing class issues allows the right to scapegoat women, POC, and trans folks whenever economic issues come up.
Intersectionality isn’t just the best way forward. It’s the only way forward.
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Also why I insta-block anyone with those blue wave and flexed arm icons in their bio ...
and I'm still angry at the hypocrisy behind Henry David Thoreau's mother brining him lunches and washing his clothes!
I have seen so much misogyny & racism from all 3 groups & it sucks.
Run candidates who actually LISTEN to people.
Muted.
Thug ethos *is* trump.
1/
Maybe it’s more like stop blaming center left. It’s no wonder we can’t have a country. We can’t get center left together, much less 3/4 of the population satisfied.
We’re done it’s over. Good luck with a donor-less party.
I've definitely interacted with people practicing it, I've just never heard the name.
Not arguing, just chatting.
Just a bunch of nepobaby LARPers who get signal boosted by total chumps.
it didn't fkng work. there's nothing more I can do except put my body on the line and I won't because I'm taking care of two households of vulnerable people
now I am focusing on giving local aid to my community and my people
Sorry about democracy. it's been nice
This has been the attitude in every civil rights movement. And it’s stupid af! You could really use women and especially Black women on your team!
If men within didn’t actually *compete* with women and POC that they should be equally included in the movements they started.
Like, the conversation isn’t “women first.” Obviously put out the 🔥 in DC but with us, please? Why is that hard?
Everyone is secondary to their well-being.
Inaccurate.
The severed artery is women: the majority.
Once we can all agree that women are deserving of all possible rights and dignities, we'll get to the disabled, to the differently abled.
1/
Were trying to rally as many ppl as possible & the best (& moral) thing to do is to show ppl who've been told to wait for decades for equality that we're willing to take on that fight right now, not in another 5, 10, or 20 years. 1/
We could have stopped this but yall didn’t want that lady in office
"Women's issues are a distraction."
In response to "Black Lives Matter", coined the phrase: "All lives matter"
And they LOVE him.
(Corrections welcome)
We must encourage better.
Economic absolutionism is just centerism.
What I don't get are the thousands of fellow travelers back in 2016 who got worked over by sexist, racist "Bernie bros" on social media and said "This is fine." People I knew for a fact cared about these issues if only because they're personally implicated.
So yes Marx set up the “we don’t need to talk about marginalized people because I assume the problem will fix itself”
Intersectionality isn’t just the best way forward. It’s the only way forward.
But every day I see a post like, “Typical leftists fucking HATE black people and women!”
Like, when? Why? How?