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according to @Custoslibera’s post

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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.

    Screenshot_20240213-205642_DuckDuckGo

    • 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.

    • 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?

    • 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.

        • The Right cannot change, it’s in their nature.

          The right will change, and we'll figure out how. That or their immutability will figure into the great filter of the human species.

          • It's more that we need to wait for the old ones to die off and let the new generations who have slightly less hate, but are still unwilling to change replace them.

    • .Those of us on the left needs to be more concerned with our optics and police ourselves better.

      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?

      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

      They're meant to get a reaction and spark conversation.

      Many of these are so easy to correct for, "Reform the Police", "Black Lives Matter Too" are the most obvious and easy changes.

      "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.

      *I support the ideas behind all of them, but how they are perceived by conservatives is not how they were intended to be understood.

      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.

      • 『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』

      • 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.

          • This is what the right cannot hear, this is the optics I'm talking about. We can't say the quiet part out loud.

            I am not convinced that literally all cops are bastards, there are some who are trying to change the system from within, we need to hold these people up as exemplars.

            • They don't try very hard. If they do, they get demoted, discharged or dead very quickly.

              Efforts to change the system from within have been going on for over a century now. We've seen the same patterns of corruption and brutality surface, get confronted and then dismissed with the same inaction.

              No, they're all bastards to the last, and even those who quit have to confront the injustice in which they've personally participated just to sleep at night. Law enforcement in the US exhibits a lot of similarities to Heydrich's Sicherheitsdienst and engages in the same kind of overpolicing in order to justify its violence and continued existence.

              As for those unwilling to hear it, or who buy into the pervasive pro-police propaganda in the media, they put themselves at risk, for the face-eating leopards are very much on the prowl.

        • 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.

            • I agree. I'd argue though that these two directions complement each other instead of being contradictory.

      • 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.

      • You missed the point entirely.

    • 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.

        • 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.

                • Liberal, as it was and always has been used academically and philosophically, refers to Liberalism, an ideology centered around private property rights and individual liberty as core values.

                  You are using it as a synonym for open-minded and forward thinking, which are certainly good traits, but not exclusive to nor expressive of leftism. Leftism is about worker ownership of the Means of Production, plain and simple.

                  As for Gen Z, yes, there is a rising reactionary movement just as there is a rising Leftist movement. Socialism is more popular than ever among Gen Z. The fact that fascism is also rising, albeit at a slower pace, among Gen Z is just a symptom of the rising Socialist sympathies. Fascism has always been expressed as a defense against rising Socialist sympathies as the bourgeoisie violently protects itself. People don't just decide to become fascist, nor do they just decide to become Socialist.

                  History is driven by material conditions, not by people and ideals. Look for root causes.

                  • What's your take on the Andrew Tate bullshit?

                    Do you think that is in a similar vein as a reactionary fascism?

                    Personally, I think it's a symptom of the new generations being less connected as a result of our social condition fueled by overuse of technology and social media.

                    I see the rise of misogyny is how young men are failing to understand that it isn't just them being isolated, the young women are feeling isolated too. It's not that feminism has made women too critical of masculine traits, but rather, young men just don't realise being masculine isn't going to make you a superstar.

                    Then it comes back to social media. The perception about what it takes to be loved and successful.

                    • It's multifaceted, but similar.

                      First, again, people are driven by material conditions more than people and ideas.

                      Following this, we can see that the rise in feminism has resulted in a reactionary response from some subsets of young men. Compounding this issue is Capitalism's continued decline, by which people are further alienated not just from their labor, but from each other. The withering of communal structures and the commoditization and addiction of human contact via social media has additionally pushed young men into struggle.

                      Some of these young men find misguided hope that they can still succeed in the system and come out on top, delusionally buying into alpha-male bourgeois mythos, and band together.

                      It's similar to fascism rising in popularity as a response. There's a thesis, an antithesis, and eventually, a synthesis. That's the dialectic at work! Although I think people can take the dialectic too far, in an almost religious manner, it can be helpful to analyze current events.

                      • I think even in a communist society, the failed experiment which is social media would have resulted in a lot of isolation.

                        Being exposed to a lot of beautiful, charismatic, multi-talented people creates a perception that the one witnessing is not as special.

                        Even within tighter local communities, I could see how a teenager could form a perspective of their community being below-average in talent and forming resentment.

                        Of course, it's all speculation, and obviously capitalism plays a role, I'm just not convinced it's as significant as the role social media plays alone.

              • Liberalism doesn't start with capitalism. This is just bad political science people on the Internet love to repeat. Liberalism revolves around the idea of individual liberty, from which the idea of property rights commonly emerges. Capitalism is arguably a corruption of some subset of these ideals, but is in no way a necessary outcome of individual liberty.

        • What do you consider "centrism", though? The US has moved so far to the right, we've lost track of the center.

        • At this point I abandoned any hope to convince people that talking and talking about Trump, when he's actually got no power right now, is going to serve the presidency to him on a silver plate.

          I see constant whining about the right on these "leftist" spaces. How can they not understand that this is meaningless?

    • "Black Lives Matter Too"

      Only someone operating in bad faith would claim this isn't what "Black Lives Matter" means.

      • That's the entire Right. You cannot win them on the grounds of good-faith, truthfulness, or humanity because their politics is solely about power. Conservative politics are the politics of abusers—litterally everything they wish to "conserve" within society includimg "tradition" is their freedom and ability to abuse. That's it:

        Family values is not about creating healthy families, it is about patriarchy and the right of the parents to abuse their children.

        Defending the sanctity of marriage is about defining LGBTQ people out of legal rights and entitlements.

        School choice is about controlling what ideas not just their children are exposed to but their neighbors as well.

        Etc. Etc.

        Every conservative position is a bad faith push to further their ability to control the lives others and their ideas deserve neither respect nor a platform.

    • 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.

    • Please tell me, as a trans nonbinary person, what the respectable version of "trans women are women" is?

      • I don't really know honestly. I'm sure someone can come up with something clever which gets to the intent behind the meaning without entrenching bigots.

      • Living your own life for yourself and not getting bent out of shape because strangers on the Internet aren't interested in changing their cultures and traditions to adapt to whatever you demand of them.

      • You don't have to say anything like it, no replacement needed.

        The phrases like "black lives matter" and "trans women are women" imply their opposite. That is, the only reason they are being said is because they aren't true. They are said in an attempt to make them true.

        When people hold a sign saying black lives matter they aren't celebrating the great respect that is given to black people. They are protesting that black lives do not in fact matter to some people. They are trying to make it so that black lives matter.

        I think the downside of this approach is that it creates a kind of backlash when you make a kind of generalization about a lot of people saying they care less about black lives than other lives. Whether it is true or not, they will feel falsely accused and become defensive, dig in, and look for reasons why they are actually fine.

        Similarly with proclaiming that "trans women are women". It points the finger at anyone who disagrees, saying they are wrong about women. Maybe they grew up with an idea of what the word women means. Now you are telling them they have been using the word incorrectly for a long time, maybe decades. You might even accuse them of transphobia or bigotry based on a disagreement over semantics. If they feel this is unfair they will not be won over to your cause.

        You might say indignantly "what how can you say the it is not true that trans women are women?". Well, let's think for a minute about what it takes for that statement to be true. For that statement to be true, it would have to be the case that most of the time you see, hear, or read the word "women" it refers to cis and trans women using the recent idea of self-identification of gender rather than the prior one.

        If we had reached that point, then the statement would be true, but also it would be totally uninteresting to make the statement. It would be like saying "women are also human" or something (hopefully) uncontroversial.

        As for how to get there, I'm not sure.

        Maybe more inclusive language like "get to know a trans person before you judge" would push people to take a step that is known to reduce transphobia. Or "treat trans women with dignity" as a way to evoke a person's gentler nature? Or "if she looks like a woman and talks like a woman, don't be rude, treat her like a woman"? Kind of random ideas there, though.

        I don't know the right answer, but the nasty rhetoric and accusations people glibly throw around online to degrade and vilify people who aren't happily jumping on board the trans movement train...I personally think it's divisive and unproductive. It's going to lose potential allies rather than recruit them.

    • The strength of the right is that they'll accept anyone who isn't left.

      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.

      • It's definitely a weird time to be a republican lol.

        However, I haven't seen much denouncement of the crazies, if at all.

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