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this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Those of us on the left needs to be more concerned with our optics and police ourselves better.
Catch-phrases like "all cops are bastards", "defund the police", "~~math is racist~~", "black lives matter", "trans-women are women" etc., do not help to promote ~~liberal~~ progressive ideologies and push the people on the fence away.
For the record, I'm not saying that the ideas behind the words are bad*, but the phrases themselves act as a litmus test; If anyone questions the phrases, the divide has occurred, and they're a fascist (another word which is used far too often).
Many of these are so easy to correct for, "Reform the Police", "Black Lives Matter Too" are the most obvious and easy changes.
There are those who'll say that conservatives are going to complain about it anyway, and many of them are set in stone, but there are far too many people going to the right, as a result of the left making fools of ourselves.
The strength of the right is that they'll accept anyone who isn't left. Proud Boys, Neo-Nazi's, and KKK are tolerated by the right because their strength is in numbers, not ideas.
*I support the ideas behind all of them, but how they are perceived by conservatives is not how they were intended to be understood.
EDIT: The conversations about liberal and liberalism have been draining. There is one definition which is practically synonymous with progressivism - this is what I meant, not Liberalism.
Not a single person on the left has ever said math is raciat. That was something Tucker Carlson wholesale made up after we started asking why black kids did worse in school. As for "black lives matter" I'd say that's pretty self-evident, and the only possible rebuttal ("don't white lives matter too?") has a one sentence counter ("obviously. but white lives aren't under threat right now.")
More to the point, respectability politics in general is a trap. We could have better slogans, that's true, especially in the "getting people on our side" phase, but compromising what we believe in to be more palatable to moderates, even in the slightest, is unacceptable. "Sure, I'm cool with trans people (maybe I'm even trans myself), but neopronouns are where I draw the line" is their in. Once conservatives see that we admit some point is too far to our side, once they see the bubble of people we protect can shrink, they won't stop until it's shrunk all the way.
I wouldn't go so far as calling those people leftists (same as tankies aren't leftists) but "math is racist" is definitely a thing that happens. People were suing in Canada that the tests to become accredited as teacher includes maths tests, and because some statistic somewhere showed that black folks score statistically lower on maths, they claimed that the requirement to pass it is racist. That completely ignored that they could re-take the test as often as they pleased and that plenty of education was given to prospective teachers that enabled them to pass those tests. A lower court agreed with the claim of racial discrimination, the constitutional court then struck it down pretty much saying "lulwut" in legalese.
No, maths is not racist. The people claiming it is racist were the racists here, thinking that being black makes you somehow inherently incapable of passing those tests, so much that you can't even pass them with studying. Also I bet the disparity in maths scores by skin colour vanishes if you control for socio-economic status but the complainants would've needed maths to understand that so they didn't.
OTOH, optically those kinds of fucks are associated with leftism and I'd say it's important to openly respond to that kind of silliness with "lulwut" before the courts get around to doing it.
As to black lives matter: I think it was a strategic mistake to oppose "all lives matter". The slogan, that is, not the racist fucks. Instead, it should've immediately been appropriated by the movement precisely to define it and to leave no doubt in anyone's mind that you don't mean "non-black lives don't matter", which is understandably a reading lots of people had because they're projecting their own racism, or just racist realism.
Neopronouns are an enby thing, not trans and yes I'm completely fine with calling you they/them and have no issues with your ingroup using as many different pronouns as there are members, but I'm not going to fucking remember all of them. I very much draw a hard, red, line at "difficult on purpose" as that would validate people's vulnerable narcissism, "prove that you don't hate me by jumping over random hoops I come up with". Leftism is not the defence of maladaptive personality traits.
Just to shoot myself in the foot, the meaning behind "math is racist" is a nuanced discussion, but it wasn't the left who distilled the idea down to "math is racist", it was Fucker.
My problem is with phrases which fail to capture the meaning behind the words, phrases which are vague or easy to strawman, and phrases which are needlessly imflammatory.
There are many more which bother me but I'm drawing a blank. Thanks metacognition
Liberal != leftist. Also, the right wing could not care less about optics, because they are the ones who dictate what is acceptable. Why would we play by their rules, especially since they always change them?
Oops, my bad, I forgot liberal means something different in America. I meant it as a synonym for left.
Common misunderstanding is we're playing the same game. The game they're playing is "own the lib-tards". At the moment, we are scoring own-goals and it's fucking embarrassing.
And as aforementioned, it's the own-goals which are causing people to switch sides.
The game the left is playing is "who has the best idea", which doesn't matter to the right, because they're either deliberately taking us out of context, or believing on face value what is being said by those who are consciously misunderstanding.
The only way to win both games is to stop giving them ammo and present our ideas with a modicum of sanity.
Well then you shouldn't use them as synonims because they are fundamentally different ideologies.
Again, why would we care about their game and scoring goals in it or not when we know they can move the goalposts at any time? The whole optics game is rigged in their favour, so don't play. Leftist ideas are sane, they are the ones misrepresenting them as insane, no matter how logical they are. They have massive funding and a giant media machine to push it. Fuck them.
Do what is right. Simple.
Yes, the game is rigged in their favour, absolutely. The problem is that their ideas will not change, they are conservative, they conserve their ideas.
It's the responsibility of the ones who can change, to be smarter about it. If we sink to their level, we are no better than them.
Progressives are smarter, but we're not acting like it. That's why I'm saying we need to be better at policing our own, it's all about mitigating needless stupidity.
Also, outside of America, liberal and leftist are essentially synonymous, so that's why I used it. But it's my fault for not remembering America makes a very different distinction.
European here. They are absolutely not synonymous. Where I grew up liberals are the right wing, with socialists on the left and religious party on the center.
How are we not acting smart by saying "black lives matter" and "trans women are women"? These are great, simple and to the point slogans.
The only way they can be seen as controversial is of you don't agree with these statements because you believe that black lives dont matter and that trans women aren't "real women". So that would make you a right-winger.
Liberals are right-wingers all around the world, not only in america.
I know you probably mean well, but guess what? I do not care about how right-winger feels and I will not water down my opinions to please them.
I don't want to get into an argument about semantics, but liberal does not mean right wing.
It isn't about pleasing them or playing by their rules. It's about not giving them ammo to shoot your comrades.
Liberalism is a pro-free market Capitalist idea centered on the ideas of individual liberty. This is right wing. It isn't fascism, but it's also not leftist.
The divide between left and right is who you think should own and control the Means of Production: the Workers, or Capitalists.
Well, the said liberals have defunded schools, hospitals, trains, retirement and anyknd of welfare here in the name of "being opened to new ideas", so it's a bit more than semantics. Sorry, I don't want to be associated with liberalism.
Liberal bourgeois are a significant political force since the French revolution - and always opposed people. It is and always was about the freedom of industry barrons and nothing else.
Liberal ≠ liberalism. I've had to explain this so many damn times in this thread it's beginning to make me nutty.
Look at the definition above. Those are leftist ideals, very different from those who are American Liberalism fanatics.
For someone who's chief complaint is "leftists are really bad at communicating our ideas", you might want to sit back and really think about what you're doing right now.
It's because you're using liberal as in, "wow that was a really liberal amount of gravy," synonymously with liberal as in, "a supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise."
The left gets massacred for prosaic slogans like "Black lives matter" and "Trans rights are human rights" while the right straight up chants "Jews will not replace us" and nobody bats an eye. So I don't think the left's tone is the problem here.
And yes, for the record, black lives matter and trans women (note, no hyphen) are women.
The Left are the adults in the room. We need to speak clearly so the children do not think we are taking them to the dentist (we totally are but there's no need to trigger them).
The Right cannot change, it's in their nature. It's practically pointless to try. The best we can do is be tactical, and avoid scaring them.
And how well has being the adults in the room worked for us? In the US, it's done nothing but marginalize the left time after time. Our choices for leadership boil down to a contest between center-right and fascist, and fascist is winning.
The fact is, people want anger. People understand anger. People are angry, and for good reason. Our society is completely, utterly fucked, and everyone knows it, even if they don't quite know how or why. And it's precisely that sentiment that fascists like the MAGA movement prey upon. They give people something to blame for everything being fucked, while what laughingly passes for the left continues pretending everything is fine. And so people go to the right, over and over and over again, because at least the right acknowledges their anger.
There's a reason that the last time the left had a real moment in this country was when there were massive protests all over the nation, screaming at the top of their lungs, "BLACK LIVES MATTER!" and "DEFUND THE POLICE!" We finally let our anger show, and guess what? This country stood with us, over and over, and mobilized like hell to get Trump out of office. And then the Biden administration abandoned us and called for "civility" and "reaching across the aisle" like we all knew they would, and now the fascists are back.
We are not going to get anywhere as long as we keep trying to be the "adults in the room" and try to be "civil". We need to get fucking mad, and stay fucking mad, and do the work to make real change whether the other guys want it or not.
We can offer hope instead of fear. The right is steeped in fear, it fuels their entire ideology. If we are able to offer hope, hope is more powerful than fear.
But being the adults in the room we must remember who we are speaking to. We have to converse with them, not at them. If you converse at them, they will simply retreat into the fear bubble because it is familiar, comfortable, and makes them feel safe.
I'm not saying we don't offer hope. But hope and anger are not incompatible.
You can't offer hope for a better tomorrow unless you are willing to point out and fix the problems of today. And as long as we are avoiding scaring the right, we cannot do this.
I think we already police each other far too much. We need to police the right better.
What puts you on the left, by the way?
They're meant to get a reaction and spark conversation.
"Reform" and "defund" are not the same things. People tried "reform the police". That didn't work. It isn't a good rallying cry.
Defunding the police also makes more sense when you realize that the police are over-funded in the first place.
What do you think that the ideas behind them are? Because I have a feeling that you don't understand the meanings behind some of these slogans.
There's a lot to unpack behind something like "trans women are women", but that's supposed to be the start of the conversation, not the end.
I don't know how much the left can police the right, if at all.
I don't think the left need to police ourselves more, I think we need to police less, but with more patience, respect and insight (better).
I see the left eating its own all the time. A lot of it is the No True Leftist fallacy. Let's say you're a gay vegan communist hippie who just so happens to think trans women shouldn't use the womens bathroom, then you're not reasoned with, you're immediately a bigot. This is the wrong kind of policing and causes people to seek validation from people who think the same.
I'm leftist for sure, communism is the end-goal. I'm vegan, I hate animal exploitation and suffering. We need to save the planet and ourselves. Discrimination sucks. Rehabilitation is more important than punishment. I'm atheist, religion is harmful. What am I missing?
The phrases are meant to get a reaction and spark a conversation sure. That happens on the left, but the right take it at face value and run with it.
The meanings behind the slogans.
"All cops are bastards" systemic issues inherently make the duty of the police, not a community hero, but a revenue generating, fear mongering enforcer of dumb laws.
There are good police officers though who do want to help. That's why I don't like it.
"Black Lives Matter" yeah, they do. End of story.
"Trans women are women" the word woman used to exclusively mean "female at birth". Now it means "those who identify as a woman". Therefore, identifying as a woman makes you a woman.
How'd I do doc? Did I pass? Or am I literally Hitler?
There are good police officers though who do want to help.
Not in the current system. Down to the local precinct they are required to cover for their less kind / more brutal brethren in blue.
If you are in law enforcement in the US in the 2020s, you need to get out. The system really is that comprehensively corrupt.
The phrase acab does not imply that literally every single police officer out there is corrupt, a bad cop, whatever, but rather that the police as an institution in general corrupt to the core, acts on impulse, aggression, racism. The goal is to point to the wrongdoings of the police as a whole, as a system.
It's the same thing when people say that, as a whole, all men are pigs or something similar. Yes, of course there are men that aren't but the vast majority of them is. The phrase is pointing to patriarchy, rich white men ruling the world, essentially, toxic masculinity and many other things.
vegan btw
That's not my understanding. "All cops are bastards" because even the "good" cops are complicit in a corrupt system. A cop who is actually a good person can't remain a cop for long, because they would have to fight the very system that they're a part of. In order to remain a cop, you have to remain silent to the injustices that you're aware of.
『rant』
Abolish the police.
It's time to take a good hard look at how we approach wrongdoing and injustice, as very little of what happens falls into the realm of petty crime (a category that includes premeditated homicide).
Our current system focuses on detecting and seizing solvent assets and filling prison cells with warm bodies. It has a not-insignificant body count of its own, and completely ignores the elite deviance that costs society more lives, more suffering, more cost and more destruction than petty crime by orders of magnitude. (Such as the opioid crisis, PFOA throughout our water supplies and preventable industrial greenhouse emissions.)
『/rant』
You missed the point entirely.
The only point I agree on is that "defund the police" is a dumb slogan. "Defund" means "remove all funding," which is not the solution.
Conservatives would not change their minds. They listen to whatever their talking heads tell them, and they would turn that around and make a counter protest. That's all conservativism is.
There are no "sensible" right-wingers, they've had their values thoroughly corrupted by a media-machine designed to split the worming class against itself. Changing optics would do nothing, so instead the left should focus on continuing grassroots efforts.
Also, liberals are not leftists, liberalism is pro-capitalism.
I'm feeling like you're deliberately misunderstanding me.
The people I'm appealing to are centrists. The last thing we need are more votes for Trump. It was too close last time, and it'll be too close this time too.
What do you consider "centrism", though? The US has moved so far to the right, we've lost track of the center.
Unfortunately the 2 party system in America essentially means there is no centre.
For intent and purpose, the centre is the group who doesn't vote because they think both options are equally shit.
Liberals are centrists, and they voted for Biden. Fascists are voting for Trump, not moderate right-wingers. What democrats need to appeal to is leftists, who they have largely scorned.
American Liberals are a different thing from those who subscribe to (non-American) liberal ideology.
Democrats have a really low bar to score. "Not Trump" is shockingly low. Leftists are in agreement, "not Trump" is better than "Trump".
I really don't think the democrats need to do much at all to convince the left, besides remind everyone how fucked it was four years ago.
I think it's more important to prevent people migrating to the right (as we see with GenZ Andrew Tate fans), and pull in as many moderate right-wingers as possible.
It seems impossible at first glace, but I've seen viseos of republicans openly trying to convince their peers that Trump deceived them. It gives me a sliver of hope.
Liberals are liberals, no matter the country. Liberalism refers to a Capitalist ideology centered around individual freedom and private property rights, and it originated in the Enlightenment.
Gen Z is more leftist than it is fascist. There's a reactionary rise in fascism as fascism is really just a response to the decay of Capitalism and the rise in Socialism, as the bourgeoisie protects itself violently.
American liberals are not a different thing.
I'm just tired of discussing semantics at this point so I just don't care enough to argue about what Liberal means.
I learned my lesson, I cannot use that word online to express what the definition of Liberal means to me based on the contexts of how it was used academically/philosophically.
GenZ is generally more progressive, but there has been a worrying rise in anti-feminism within GenZ men. The amount may be small in relation, but the fact that it is rising at all is concerning.
Only someone operating in bad faith would claim this isn't what "Black Lives Matter" means.
Please tell me, as a trans nonbinary person, what the respectable version of "trans women are women" is?
You actually kind of have liberalism wrong as well though. It's the idea that individual liberty creates political agency. From that we get the ideas around inclusive society being critical to a functioning democracy, because democratic participation is the intersection of inclusion, liberty and individual actualization.
Or rather, people must first be free to engage with political questions out in the open (liberty). Then they must feel like they have a stake in society (inclusion). Then they must have the time and resources to participate (actualization). This is the foundation of liberal democracy.
What you are describing is commonly considered a form of liberalism, but is more aptly described as progressive liberalism. You are definitely correct though, that many forms of leftism and liberalism are compatible, despite people on Lemmy insisting otherwise.
Here the far right is constantly bickering and their political parties are steadily fissioning. There's pro Putin and anti Putin far right, vax and antivax far right, ethnonationalistic and moderate far right... sometimes it just isn't possible to agree what you hate.