I wanted to share a few thoughts on a comment I saw earlier about drama occurring on a leftist site outside of Lemmygrad.

man why are leftist spaces online like this? feels like they’re too busy shooting themselves on the foot constantly to get their shit together while fascism and reich-wingers are taking over everything.

First, every human space is bound to conflict and contradictions, this is expected. But the characterization of that existing only on leftist spaces is misleading.

If you subject yourself to torture and visit extreme right-wing communities, you’ll notice they are extremely toxic and very violent to each other, and usually there is a big turnover of users. The violent and abusive language is part of their socialization, and those who endure the longest become normalized to this type of language, so much so, it transpires outside the right-wing communities themselves.

The idea that right-wingers are in unity I think is also incorrect, what happens is that the right-wing worldview is being more and more normalized by “social” media, “Christian” churches, and even formal education. So, the right-wingers appear in unity because they parrot the same talking points and ideas, but it’s just a reflection of bourgeois ideology among the people.

What is particular to leftist spaces is the struggle for a coherent political philosophy. Since right-wing thinking is the “standard” thinking in a bourgeois dictatorship, a right-wing space wouldn’t bring anything new, just a reaction against leftist discourse, worldview and philosophy.

Besides, leftists are much more sensitive towards the reproduction of social issues, like male chauvinism, racism, transphobia, and since these are the building blocks of Western political thinking, it’s expected that even leftists will eventually present those views, but they are more keen to be criticized and to generate a bigger polemic.

When a right-wing leadership presents a racist view, most of their supporters will simply be silent about it to “protect” the image of their leader. Some of them openly agree to the racist views, but understand this is not to be exposed. One example is the Trump rape and sexual assault cases, his trips to the pedophile island of Epstein, this is all overlooked, even if the right-wingers are most vocal about “the children” and pedophiles.

When it happens that a leftist leader presents a troubling view, they tend to be criticized to the bone (depending on how “radical” is that leftist). A leftist or communist leader has to be sinless and incapable of mistakes in the eyes of leftists, otherwise they are not a good representative. Left-wingers tend to be more critical of certain expressions of authority, whereas sometimes this in excess can be destructive.

Leftists have to constantly fight against bourgeois ideology in all fronts, our work is much more extensive and difficult, while right-wing communities simply allow bourgeois ideology to flow to its maximum extent. They have to fight the influence of those who care about facts and reason, but it’s not as tiring as having to fight against bourgeois ideology, which is hegemonic.

  • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
    3·
    15 days ago

    Good points and I think we are more or less in agreement.

    I don’t know what you mean by this paragraph comrade, and I have trouble following your reasoning. But I’ll comment about this. The liberal propagandists should definitely be extracted from our community, but the honest liberals should definitely be heard and honestly debated. On our part, trying as much as possible to ignore provocations and try our best to dismantle their arguments in few words. I see a few reasons why:

    So yeah, I meant like how membership here goes through a process and liberals who come from other instances aren’t necessarily tolerated posting whatever they want. But I do think I got lost in the weeds a little bit on that paragraph of mine. General idea I was going for is maybe along the lines of how you broke it down, that we have a certain need to reach these kind of people, or even problems in our own thinking. As opposed to a mentality where we view others as people who have to go in a corner and “fix themselves” and then we can engage with them. I guess the distinction I’m talking about is kind of like what some have termed “call in” vs. “call out”; the difference being something like (call out) “you are bad, I’m going to put you down because it makes me feel superior” vs. (call in) “if at all possible, we’re going to figure out how to improve this situation together; and if we can’t and I move against you, it’s not because ‘you’re bad and I’m inherently superior’, it’s because you refuse to be humane and/or negotiate with other human beings”.

    Hopefully that is more clear. Brain is a bit fuzzy today.

    Edit: Also, I appreciate you telling me you weren’t clear on it. In trying to clarify, I feel like I made it clearer to myself what I meant lol. Sometimes I write out thoughts intended more as a piece of the puzzle than anything else, so talking them through further can help crystallize.