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Every time a right wing pundit talks about the left wing hive mind it’s a clear tell that they have no understanding of their political rivals at all…
“The united front tactic is simply an initiative whereby the communists propose to join with all workers belonging to other parties and groups and all unaligned workers in a common struggle to defend the immediate, basic interests of the working class against the bourgeoisie.” - 4th World Congress of the Communist International
Basically the thing Trump does where he hears some antiquated information and then his brain re-interprets it into a pre-school level understanding.
Ah yes “please for the love of shit stop fighting each other and fight the people we all agree are the problem instead” “see the left has always been unified”
If the left were even a fraction as organized as claimed, Bernie would have blown the primary out in 2016 and ridden into the whitehouse with solid majorities in both houses.
It honestly roils me how impotent the left is, because an active organized left could grab this country by the balls and drag it into a whole new era, but all we have is a million headed hydra with each neck pulling in a different direction because nobody can get over themselves for long enough to fall in line behind a common objective.
Yeah, a lot of the stuff that the “Left” fails on seems to be because it hits “well it’s not exactly perfect and good for absolutely anybody do we’re not gonna do it”
Whereas the “Right” is basically ‘well it came from my guy so… seems good’
I think we’re also over-estimating the strength of the left in the US. I think a century of propaganda and witch hunts is still weighing on the prospects of anything overly pro-labor making it to the mainstream.
Seriously the left would steam roll these yokals into oblivion
They’re poor that’s why.
Uneducated, low resources, no time, no money or means.
Wealth has nothing to with it. A lot of them are middle ‘class’
That’s still working class. It isn’t wealth it is life. Wealthy people have time, working folk don’t. Can’t educate or organize the same and certainly don’t have financial capacity to act.
Many middle class folk do not have friends, a place to entertain or amass others or time.
Not saying impossible just that is why I think we have issues there, the progressive folks are busy holding society together. Too busy to organize.
The Democratic party is still controlled by the rich just like the GOP. Different rich people, possibly with better morals, but they’re still protecting their financial interests even when it isn’t beneficial to the progressive policies they claim to support. So it wasn’t “the Left” that ended up letting Trump win and fucked us for generations with a corrupt SCOTUS but the rich donors controlling the Democratic party.
Yeah because all those people that had zero turnout energy during the primary were actually paid off by the rich. That’s why they didn’t vote in the primary!
Fuck right off with this DNC conspiracy bullshit. Progressives owe their cause turning out, you don’t get to blame everyone else for not doing the revolution for you while you’re sitting on the couch instead of doing the literal barest minimum to actually materially support what you claim you believe in.
Fuck your words. Give the cause your actions, or can your empty platitudes about how it’s everyone else’s fault your side refused to vote.
Unfortunately in this case, it’s projection. The right falls in line and they accomplish stuff because of that. The left could really learn from that.
The right falls in line because they’re fascists who are afraid of thinking for themselves. Diversity of thought causes discourse, that’s a natural fact, but it should be celebrated as a strength. Looking for leftists to shut up and fall in line is like peak “enlightened centrist” thinking.
There’s fascists, american monarchists, libertarians, religious nuts, the rare fiscally conservative, the 2A’ers, etc.
Who said “leftists to shut up”? Not me. You can bemoan the 2 party system all you want, but it’s what’s here. The way for the left to be actually effective in achieving at least some of its goals is to give Dems consistent and overwhelming victories.
Who said “leftists to shut up”?
People talking shit
Or just some Stalin stan
A lack of free and critical thinking is probably the reason the Right have such an easy time falling in line with whatever their figurehead happens to be peddling at the time.
They definitely can. It’s been off putting lately that the left has a check list that I have to hit every mark on to not be seen as a right winger.
There are leftist who are Christian. There are leftists who are against abortion, but understand that education and reproductive health (including allowing abortions) is an important and productive way to reduce abortions, instead of bans. There are leftists who are still traditional, holding morals and ethics that aren’t fluid but also not rigid.
No one is truly happy about their political choices. Except for the insane 1/3 of Americans on the Maga train maybe.
What left?
The 1% of American politics who are ignored, Look for the pouty guy in the corner of a democratic campaign stop and you found him
It’s relative. Left of center is what most people mean when they say “the American Left” (ie, EVERYONE who doesn’t consider themselves wing or neutral, from centrist dems to communists and anarchists). What YOU folks call “the Left”, most Americans would call “the extreme Left”. Not extreme as in your ideas are extremist, but as in you’re just a tiny minority waaaay out there beyond what most people left of center believe.
I’d say fuckers problem isn’t that we are organized but maybe; we’re not a bunch of rock sucker’s mixed in with a bag’o’rascists.
Is “rock” a typo? Don’t get me wrong not cursing is cool too, just curious.
I assumed it was slang for crack cocaine users.
I support this new saying. What’s wrong with people literally fitting the original label? I think we generally appreciate those people, right?
You’re just saying that because of the time the communists took a break from a revolution against monarchists to shoot at other communists. Or because of the other time they did that
This should show everyone clearly, unambiguously, without a doubt that conservatives in America have zero idea what progressivism or leftism is about at all.
It’s just words to them. They do NOT care. It’s WWE wrestlemania. They want to paint their faces and get swept away in a stageplay and die as heartbroken as the hero if they don’t succeed and make all their enemies pay.
We need to like, mass-spam the entire Midwest america with historical romance novels with bodice-ripping sex scenes. I think if more guys just got lost in that shit, we would have a lot less tension and pain in the world.
We need to like, mass-spam the entire Midwest america with historical romance novels with bodice-ripping sex scenes. I think if more guys just got lost in that shit, we would have a lot less tension and pain in the world.
Doing that to somewhat compensate for harm from romantic chatbots and porn would be absolutely beneficial.
This + MDMA in the water supply
Now that you mention it I am a little thirsty…
Man, I can’t even agree with myself most days.
I’m imagining you doing the Gollum thing arguing with yourself about theory and both sides accusing the other of being a revisionist
I wish you were further from the truth.
Some people are more in love with the process than the progress. It’s a common failing in organized people.
What’s the old Trotskyite joke? Two members, three parties?
There’s no division like leftist unity
Yeah, I once got interested like a bored person with a special interest in 70s sci-fi, Asimov, Star Wars, Wiener’s “Cybernetics”, all those aesthetics. Because leftist ideologies are kinda associated with them.
You come to trots, they seem fine and tolerant (they even consider tolerance and humanism as their main difference from stalinists), until you mention anarcho-syndicalism as something normal or ask questions (in the spirit of normal brainstorm) about the ideal society they describe in their articles. Here they either become hostile or ghost you.
Cause it’s their (trots) fucking religion that every cook can guide a state, that a military of a trot state looks like every adult having a gun at home, and in case of war them all assembling, making a shot each and going home (quoting that Swiss joke).
And that their direct democracy and planning system too should not be really designed. Some “modern technologies” will do that.
They are just not interested in discussing how to actually build that shit. Only in the daily activity of a couple of obscure trade unions and in hating “the rich” or/and “the bourgeoisie”.
You come to ansyns, they react like “you’re already one of us if you want, now get off us, we’re not interested in that shit”.
You come to ancoms, admittedly some conversations are interesting, but talking specifics with them is like Napoleon going into Russia - the conversation seems to be going on, but you’re increasingly feeling that you’re getting lost without gaining anything.
You come to stalinists, they tell you your opinions will be considered when they kill everyone they don’t like.
You come to usual left anarchists and may get a good conversation occasionally, but in the end realize that they are mostly interested in their hydroponic farms.
YMMV, but I don’t see much consolidation.
Still, makes us generally immune to a charismatic con man taking over the entire party.
That sounds like something somebody would say if they knew absolutely nothing about the Left (or were just trying to scare/motivate their own base). The Left are ok-ish at organizing when they’re motivated enough, but they can barely agree on anything and will find any excuse to get into a fight with each other. You’ve got people on the Left willing to virtue-signal about Israel, vote third party and lose the presidency to Trump, a candidate who would make things demonstrably worse for Palestinians and would likely increase aid to Israel and remove any lukewarm constraints that the current administration is limp-wristidly raising. Meanwhile, Republicans will overlook any of the hundreds of things wrong with their candidate and compromise any values they’ve had, just to elect the biggest shit stain in history because they know he’ll make the other side feel bad.
Well, I think that there’s actually something to this. I’ve been involved in a lot of organizing spaces, and there’s this “our backs are all up against a wall so we have to work towards a common goal of achieving a workers state and not dying due to climate change” vibe going around lately.
Yeah, I guess we do have one common goal, make life better for everyone?
No, it’s make everyone’s quality of life better! /j
Look, look… both of you make excellent points but I think the real important common goal is a better life for everyone and I will fistfight both of you until we all agree or some fascist assnugget comes by and makes us forget our pedantry.
Since nobody here has said anything about IMPROVING life for everyone, only making life better and other “Better centric” topics, I’m going to throw my vote in a shredder and actively tell everyone how awful you are.
I might be infuriated by your empty symbolic act, but I’m going to make DAMN sure you have every right to do it.
You still haven’t said anything about Improving life, so now I’m going to vote for the person who wants to throw me into a wood chipper, as a protest.
To be more realistic, in that case you would vote for the wildly irrelevant 3rd party ruskpuppet of the week in smug superiority
The Left as a single monolith is the work of fiction.
True. But it needs to be one to be an effective boogeyman in a speech like this.
As is The Right?
Authoritarians fall in line. Anarchists fall in love.
Yeah, authoritarians from either extreme. Big up to you, for your Anachro-evangelism once again.
Anachro-evangelism
Feel like I know more Anarchists who are pagan, but I’ve never stopped to count.
Ok, this guy sounds like a right wing moron, but he’s got a point. Among a lot of Leftists, ideology is fairly religious, especially the ones waiting for some revolution to broadly remake society. Or the accelerationists pushing for a purifying apocalypse.
Among a lot of Leftists, ideology is fairly religious
What?
Yeah. It’s got purity tests to separate the faithful from the nonfaithful. It has vicious infighting about heretics/apostates. It’s got a series of myths about a revolution and then a promised land.
Evangelism doesn’t only apply to those who push the story of that West Bank-ian born guy with the Mexican name… but I did wonder whether to wordswap before posting.
The Animist Evangelical showing up with an encyclopedia of deities?
I think this just generally highlights the importance of opening a book and reading. There have been centuries of Leftist thought, questions have been raised and they have been answered. Many considering themselves “left” can sympathize with Leftist goals, or even jab at the sources of modern struggles structurally, but lack the organizational and practical knowledge obtained from Theory and applying theory to practice.
The more you read, the more you realize how little you actually know.
What books specifically would you recommend?
What are you familiar with, what do you feel weak in? I’m a Marxist, so I can recommend some generally good introductory works, but if you have specific interests or pre-existing knowledge I can make specific recommendations.
Otherwise, I will always recommend the famous Yellow Parenti Speech.
Funnily enough, many online leftists think something similar is true for the right.
The right may not have great organization, but they have an astounding ability to put their blinders on for the Ten Minutes’ Hate when it’s called for. The right’s problem is that when they smell blood in the water, THEN the unity falls apart. It’s power games for them.
Parts of the left, or what passes for it in this country, would prefer martyrdom to cooperating with heretics.
This is because “the left” tries to unite groups that ultimately are at odds with each other. Anarchists of all types work very well with each other usually, but not with Auth left because they have bad praxis and care about being in control of the movement. Likewise it’s difficult to align with social democrats who think electoralism and reformism is a solution and stifle direct action.
Likewise Auth left and social democrats tend to infight, even within themselves, because their hierarchical praxis causes power play friction.
It’s simpler than that - the left has principles, while the right has unity and message discipline driven by deference to authority, a victim complex fear, hate, and thirst for power.
You’re mistaken that the right is unified. The fight among each other quite a lot. They can only manage to unite under a charismatic strongman, but quickly fall into infighting when that falters.
They’re not unified, they’re unified …now?
The fact that they have conflicting ideologies (e.g. Nazis and Zionists as I said below) and continue to push in the same direction is pretty straightforward evidence of this.
The unification pre-dates Trump - the rise of the tea party saw ideological rifts, but they all fell in line when the time came. Bush wasn’t a charismatic strongman… nor was McConnell for that matter.
You only think they’re pushing in the same direction because you’re on the outside looking in. As the op points out, they think the same about leftists.
