Comment by nradov
6 years ago
Left-wing social movements, while initially well intentioned, tend to eat their own in escalating purity spirals. Total ideological purity is demanded, and valued above competence or actual results. The apotheosis tends to be something like Communist "self-criticism" sessions where people are forced to confess their thought crimes.
https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...
> Left-wing social movements, while initially well intentioned, tend to eat their own in escalating purity spirals.
That's not particularly true of left-wing movements; to the extent it's true of them it's also true of right-wing movements. The relevant factors are orthogonal to the left-right axis.
Except it is, and not because "leftists" are bad or anything. I consider myself a leftist. It is because leftism promotes a resistance and challenging to authority and a prior belief in the goodness of the downtrodden masses. None of those are wrong per se, they are even healthy, but when they are perverted and distorted they can easily led to circuses like the cultural revolution in China. Right-wing ideologies usually promote submission to authority and traditionalism. The problems that come with excesses in that front are of a different kind.
> Except it is,
No, it's not.
> It is because leftism promotes a resistance and challenging to authority and a prior belief in the goodness of the downtrodden masses
I could with as much, justification say it is particularly associated with right-wing movements because the right promotes a rigid adherence to rules and authority, which devolves under pressure into seeking out non-adherence with progressively finer and finer combs.
> Right-wing ideologies usually promote submission to authority and traditionalism. The problems that come with excesses in that front are of a different kind.
Maybe in some other aspects, but a cycle of eating their own under pressure is not a point on which there is a difference. The left perhaps has more contribution from “people that were on the factions side before it gained power become genuinely opposed once it started executing power” and the right perhaps more from genuine intolerance for even the slightest deviation, but they both definitely experience it.
The idea of 'right wing ideology' doesn't mean anything, it's actually just mostly pseudo-intellectual nonsense created by the academic left.
Consider that the right are supposedly in favour of free markets and small government but also supposedly in favour of strong submission to authority? These positions are incompatible.
In reality most historical movements labelled as "right wing" were left wing, yes, that means fascism and Nazi-ism too. The latter of course even had "socialist" in the title yet decades of the academic left insisting that against all common sense and obvious observations, Nazis were actually right wing, has left the world hopelessly confused about this so-called spectrum. You can't be both supportive of a dictatorship and state-controlled industry, and a believer in small government, free speech and free markets.
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The difference between left right and right wing movements is that the right has sort of agreed on an outer bound for how far right is too far. It looks something like political/national racial purity. Once people start spouting that, they tend to be removed from polite conversation. There is no similar outer bound on the left. There is nothing you can support that's so far left you will be expunged from polite society.
> The difference between left right and right wing movements is that the right has sort of agreed on an outer bound for how far right is too far.
Heh. Is that a joke?
> It looks something like political/national racial purity. Once people start spouting that, they tend to be removed from polite conversation.
Yeah, the American Right has really marginalized Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, et al.
> There is no similar outer bound on the left
Really? Which of the following statements will get you excluded from public political dialogue in the US)
“Europeans did Africans a favor by bringing them to America as slaves”
Or
“Capitalist ownership of the means of production is a root of injustice and fundamentally incompatible with democracy”
(One of these has been prominently made by prominent voices on one side of the spectrum without repercussion, while people are routinely excluded for statements for more moderate than the other. At least in the US, to the extent anything vaguely resembling your point is true, it's exactly the reverse of the split you've proposed.)
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> has sort of agreed on an outer bound for how far right is too far
You think Stephen Miller wants to stop with border camps? This is an absolute absurd claim to make.
> There is nothing you can support that's so far left you will be expunged from polite society.
Where is the comparable person to Stephen Miller being anywhere close to public policy on the left? We have one barely socdem congressperson. Where are the NYT opeds about third worldism?
Can you give an example?I think this is probably country dependent (I'm from Europe) but in my experience calling yourself "communist" or even just agitating for democratic control over means of production is enough to be "canceled" in the sense that most large employers will be wary to higher you and our mainstream media will lump you in with Stalin. And that is in Europe, on the US I have less experience but I think until Bernie I wasn't aware of any visible socialist in the US.
Meanwhile, from my perspective, we Europeans lookt at North America and see a lot of racists, transphobes and anti-poor agitators complaining about being cancelled on national Media and while giving speeches at universities (e.g. fox news, Jordan Peterson). Which feels...off.
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