I don’t think this is true except by a peculiar definition that doesn’t match history. The twentieth-century left birthed Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, and a host of other horrific dictators, just as the twentieth-century right birthed Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet, and a host of other horrific dictators. No True Scotsmanning leftist dictators just muddies the discussion.
GET OFFA MY LAWN, YOU NO-GOOD KIDS!
This, I agree with. When I was first on this board a bit less than 20 years ago, I hadn’t formed my political identity yet - I was a teenager - and I remember wrestling with two factors. On the one hand, some people on the Right were often wrong. On the other hand, some people on the Left (and Czargasm is the clearest example that sticks in my mind) are massive sanctimonious pricks that made me question the whole ideology.
Thankfully when I was in college I met some people from the Left who were there because of general concern for other human beings, not because they enjoy the sense of superiority they get from shitting on people they oppose. That made me feel much better about identifying with the Left, but I agree that the problems you highlight are real and present.
Thank God we have someone as resilient as yourself to guide us. There is NOTHING in the OP which even hints at a thin skin! Just rugged individualism all the way down.
Yeah, this is true - the difference between the far left and the far right has very little to do with the ideologies of the far left and the far right, and much more to do with the fact that the supposedly moderate right has kowtowed to extremism completely, while the far left screams a lot but is pretty weak and worthless.
My sister in law recently told me that she trusts the US government less than she trusts the Chinese government. So yeah, these people exist.
“Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds” is a line you still commonly see on Twitter or on BreadTube (lefty YouTube).
To be clear, I don’t think the OP is talking about Democrats. I don’t know if a single one of the Democrats at the National level is this kind of Tankie. I kinda doubt it.
These are the idiot hecklers Kamala demolished the other day, not the Democratic voters.
That doesn’t sound like a Left leaning position at all.
Hardly. You can be Auth Left or Auth Right.
No, that doesn’t work. You can’t just shrug off anything you don’t like that the Left as done by saying ‘sorry, that’s actually right wing ideology’.
Sometimes, people do bad things for reasons you are sympathetic to. The correct thing to do is maturely process that information and take it into account, not to insist that anyone you don’t like is actually a Rightie.
Exactly; well said.
There is a kernel of truth to it, in the same way you could say that No True Christian Fights In Wars, given Jesus’s message of beating swords into plowshares and meek inheriting the earth and so on (and let’s not quibble over “sell your iPad and buy a sword” or whatever that passage is).
Leftist ideologies tend to emphasize distributed, egalitarian power, whereas rightist ideologies tend to emphasize a clear and unambiguous hierarchy–the National Assembly versus the Ancien Regime. And in theory, Stalin was imposing temporary measures that would lead to a stateless communist utopia.
But the National Assembly was fucking horrible and authoritarian, and Stalin was fucking horrible and authoritarian, despite the egalitarian ideals that they proposed. And it’s crucial that we acknowledge that a leftist ideology does not suffice to keep folks from becoming fucking awful, any more than worshipping the Prince of Peace keeps people from becoming fucking awful.
Points 2 and 3 directly contradict point 4. A great deal of DSA’s energy is spent convincing people to vote for Democrats…like, it’s literally in their name. Quick googling has failed to turn up any DSA statements on Maduro or Assad, but they’re vocally anti-Putin. I’m not saying that ignorant tankies might identify with DSA, but that’s because they’re ignorant, not because DSA is actually a tankie organization.
In contrast to Christianity, which has never violently forced anyone to convert :rolleyes:
Czarcasm annoys me at times, but he’s often correct and frequently funny, neither of which can be said for you.
Better in P&E? Lol. I used to rag on the Pit but at least it’s not P&E.
The OP has a point, the far left are literally lunatics. But, unfortunately, they are influential lunatics.
That’s not a kernel of truth, that’s utter bullshit. If Christian apologists try to say “well the Crusades, and the massacring of Jews and other religious minorities all across Europe on the way to the Crusades, weren’t REALLY Christian so you can’t put the blame for that on Christianity”, we would call that out as bullshit, right?
That’s not to say that all Christians and all of Christianity is Crusades, Inquisitions, and the Lord’s Resistance Army. But those things ARE part of Christianity.
Likewise for Left apologists who peddle bullshit like “Well TRUE Communism has never been tried” or “Stalin was right wing”. That’s just as stupid as “Well they were National SOCIALISTS right???”.
I agree–for the same reason I’m calling out “Stalin wasn’t a leftist” as bullshit.
But I also understand the underlying idea: defining an ideology by its original principles, not by the actions of its adherents. To that end, I’ve definitely known Christians who will say that the Crusaders were deeply un-Christian, and I appreciate what they’re saying even if I disagree: our disagreement is definitional.
There’s some value to taking that approach, honestly. When Rev. William S. Barber calls out the American Right for being deeply un-Christian, I disagree with him; but it’s a powerful tactic to shame and marginalize the worst of the worst, and it’s a powerful way to draw self-identified Christians toward more humane and compassionate behavior. I’m not gonna fight Barber because I think that Well Actually They Are Christians.
But in a discussion like this? I think that defining leftism by the actions of self-identified leftists is more useful than defining leftism by a set of abstract principles. Or, rather, we need a bit of both.
I agree with the OP insofar as yes, the extremists on both sides are assholes. The major difference today is that Crazy As Fuck MAGAs get shit done (unfortunately) while the Crazy-Ass Progressives are relatively harmless. Someone screaming at a city council meeting or on a university campus about SJW topic of the week? Meh, just move on and shove past them like when dealing with Karens.
I countered a religiouso that said to ignore all that because it was centuries ago with one of Pius IX’s many fuck ups. They had no reply.
That’s a bit of a stretch. Influential how, precisely?
Don’t get me wrong, tankies exist, even in positions of… Some… Power. I recently quoted some particularly braindead Tankie idiocy from a UC Berkeley professor, and from a former Bernie staffer. And that’s a problem, because I wouldn’t trust a Tankie to deliver my mail, much less educate young people or meddle in politics.
But the bar for “influential” is set by the far right, where MAGA-nuts have totally taken over mainstream conservatism.
In that context, Judith Butler is hardly ‘influential’.
The loony wing of the Far Left is annoying. The loony wing of the Far Right is running the show, and is dangerous.
You were NOT far left twenty years ago. Those things you mention in paragraph 2 were the right things to do twenty years ago, and they’re the right things to do today. That’s centrism, just as it was twenty years ago.
Wait, so now “centrism” is defined as “the right thing to do”?
Hah.