What do you believe that most people of your political creed don't?
What do you believe that most people of your political creed don't?
Just wanted to prove that political diversity ain't dead. Remember, don't downvote for disagreements.
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I think we need to figure out how to make leftism more appealing to centrists, and particularly to the cis/straight/white/male demographic.
IMO the biggest problem is media. They report through a center-right lens and focus on sensationalism. So all people see of the left is the "check your privilege cis white boy" and "anarchists have burned down the entire city" BS lines instead of the vast aid efforts and daily work.
For years I've been hearing "the media has a left bias" though. I guess that's left=democrat party, not left=leftist.
It depends on the material conditions. Also there is a reason "centrists" even exist as they are now and appear to you as some kind of constant monolith. Or as Marx did put it "Ideas of ruling class are the ruling ideas"
I feel like one obvious answer is "stop being so eager to alienate cis straight white men"
I think a lot of conversation is "men go to therapy" but therapy alone isn't enough? We kind of cast men off of having all the privilege in the world without recognizing that patriarchy hurts them too, and in lots of facets of their lives in a way that just going to a therapist once a week does not help.
Yeah, therapy is not a viable solution for broad societal issues
I think this advice is not very actionable as is, and needs more digesting into more specific strategies.
Like, for instance: let's avoid making people feel rejected by the left for having privilege, and instead focus on guiding privileged people so that they can use their privilege to help the cause.
I agree. I'm glad you made this post and are actually interacting in the comments to be constructive.
There's a book I was introduced to last year called "good strategy bad strategy" that is worth a read, most of it's somewhat obvious and a little dated as far as examples, but the framing of how to think about strategy is pretty solid. Its an easy read, and like most non fiction books, you get most of the meat in the first half.
it will become automatically appealing to them the moment that is pays out economically for them. if they could afford more under a leftist politics, than under the current politics, people are gonna be all for it.
In theory it should have a strong monetary incentive for all but the wealthiest of cis/striaght/white/males. They just don't realize that for some reason.
I can think of a good reason but i'm not sure whether you're willing to buy into it.
people naturally don't think of themselves as individuals. people think of themselves as a group/society.
People recognize that under a republican US government, they're significantly more likely to go to mars and have prosperous offspring. while if they're stuck on earth, a recession and decline is waiting for them. they can't verbalize it and probably aren't even rationally aware of it, but i guess they can feel it with their heart.
of course lots of you folks are gonna immediately chime in and say "nooo i saw a youtube video that explained that it's impossible to live on mars", and honestly, you should reconsider why you're so eager to deny a topic that you've clearly not put in as much effort to think about than the people who actually do care about this project. and also, assuming it does work out; what will you do then? be ashamed of your wrong prediction? because if you're not, that means you don't stand to your prediction, and therefore the prediction is worthless. i'm not sure whether i was too direct about this and somebody perceived it as rude, but i'm tired of this feeling of being stuck. we need to think long-term again.
I'm confused, are you saying that most straight white men are not left... Because they all want to go to mars?
Is this mars thing meant to be an analogy or do you mean people literally think they will have a better life colonizing mars?
The white nationalist movement preys on alienated young white men (more than other groups). Creating avenues for including these people in our movement means less people we have to fight.
I'm not saying everyone is able to fit into our movement, or they may require so much education that we just don't have the resources to depropagandize them, but as a mass movement, more is generally better.
I think the most insidious part is that the far right feeds on men's anger and negative emotions and just keeps telling them that if they go farther right, if they become more dominant alpha male, it'll make all their negative emotions go away. And then when it doesn't, they just keep pushing right.
100% agree. I honestly think that in ~2015, the left's failure to appeal to young white men caused them to turn to the alt right. I think we scared them off with things like "check your privilege" etc., and should have focused more on getting them amped about class warfare.
I'm a straight white male that leans left, and ya, I've had friends (who, it's sad to say, are hard to talk to now) who were center go right because they were welcomed with open arms by the right and shat on by the left. Before Elon went on a rant about the dude trying to rescue those trapped kids, before Joe Rogan started leaning into the propaganda for ratings, and when Bernie had a chance, we were on the same page... But since trump got involved, Bernie got shut out, and (it's obvious now) the rich started weaponising the media against us, we have very little media that we consume that's the same.
I left reddit, rogan and switched to Lemmy and breaking points, and they have leaned in harder to Rogan and we're drawn down the rabbit hole of tim pool. Everytime I've tried to reason with them I get "what about isms", "the left is more violent", "the left hates everyone", and borderline conspiracy theory non-sense. Even my own mom was pretty center left when I was growing up and now she's bought into the non-sense because that's the media she sees.
The right tells good tales, and a lot of people on the left are gate keeping, so... Just by fact of barrier to entry the right is going to be easier to drift towards. I hope we get our shit together.
Agreed 100%. I'm glad we're collectively starting to realize this. It's a bit late, but hopefully it'll still do good.
Late is better than never
Well, I posted about this in this topic because I think it's not a perspective that's gained traction. Please help spread the good word..!
I've been thinking of starting some sort of group to help with that goal-- would you be interested? I'm not sure what we could do, but I want to do something, you know? I figure the best impact I can have is to convince other people that I mostly agree with to adopt this approach, which is what I envision the group could help with.
I'm curious
DM me too pls :D
DM me. :)
That is a controversial opinion here.
(And I agree with it. I don't know what the way is, but I hope it can be found)
When you're coming from a position of extreme privilege and you're either a bit stupid or lack empathy or general social awareness being treated equally with "lesser people" (like women, brown people or people from particular religious backgrounds) can seem an awful lot like you're being discriminated against.
I think you're missing the point a bit. Liberal/centrist values are already to treat everyone equally, but not equitably. So when leftism comes in with suggestions for change, it looks to centrists like inequality. If you listen to centrists objections to leftism, this is what they say repeatedly, so I'm inclined to believe that is how they legitimately feel. This is why I think we need slightly different messaging/branding/whatever, or to talk about these issues in a different way, so that centrists actually understand what we're getting at. It's also not hard to find instances of leftists who, when angry, lash out at the majority -- which while relatable to me, doesn't help make leftism look appealing.
(By "majority" I mean the average joe, not billionaires.)
I think the first thing to do is to shift sentiment toward solving the problem of how to make things appealing to centrists and the apolitical. Let's get "I agree -- but that has bad optics so let's focus on something else first" into our lexicon. Once the left is able to be more strategic about this, then I think we'll gain a lot more strides. I have some thoughts about what that might look like, but it's outside the scope of this post.
As a person in that demographic it’s wild to me that leftism isn’t appealing… we’re supposed to just blame everything on everyone but ourselves I suppose?
The person on my left whispers about equality, and the benefits of social safety nets. The person on my right yells lies that equality means I have to give up things, and that social safety nets will be abused by people who want to steal the fruits of my labor. The person behind me (financially) says nothing, they’re too busy just trying to live. The person ahead of me points to the person behind getting food stamps and screams “how dare they take your taxes” while they quietly steal the actual fruit of my labor.
Any time leftism gets loud enough to get enough attention to appeal to anyone, rightism is already loudly complaining about the noise. If one doesn’t think about it too much, all they’ve heard is negativity about the left and positivity about the right. Call it brainwashing, gaslighting, or indoctrination, but rarely do the facts of both sides come to play. You have to work to find the truth of leftism while also working to ignore the bullshit being screamed from the right.
Fundamentally, what Centrists want is stability, for people to get along, to find solutions that the majority on both sides would agree with. For the status-quoish state of stability.
A Centrist would be a Liberal (as its defined today, and not how it was defined in the 70's/80's) before they would be a Leftist. They perceive Capitalism as a stable foundation of the society.
To get a Centrist to believe in Leftist ideals you'd have to try and show that Leftism is also stable, AND describe how the transition/change to Leftism on its own would not be an unstabilizing thing. And also how Capitalism is a dead-end alley for the species ultimately, and how its ultimately hurtful to a society by encouraging fighting and competition between its members.
You'd also have to show Centrists that Rightists would understand that Leftism works. Centrists want both Leftists and Rightists to be 'happy' (loaded word I know, but you get the gist of what I'm trying to opine on).
No idea how to do all that, but IMO that's what would need to be done. You'd have to get the Right on board with Leftism, and you'd have to show Centrists that moving to Leftism won't be destabilizing to their current way of existing.
Best guess would be to appeal to common belief systems (safety, fairness, freedoms, respect) that all three pillars would have in common.
An overall generic example would be to prove to a Rightist that a hand-out to someone is not being unfair, but its just helping someone out until they get on their feet, and can't be exploited, to try and "raise all boats" in society. And you'd have to tell some Leftists to stop trying to exploit the system, that they're now back on their feet, and that they need to put in as much effort as everybody else does.
For Leftists/Rightists stop yelling across the divide at each other, and start talking to each other, trying to understand what is important to them, and see if both sides can meet in the middle on those things that are important to both. Centrists will be happy that the fighting has stopped, and then you'd have to be extra careful not to destroy that non-fighting in trying to move the center to the left.
Oh, and do all of this while we have freedom of speech and people purposely trying to shape the narratives towards what they just want and to F with everybody else. A.k.a., "Free Will is a Pain in the Ass".
Thank you for coming to my 🧸-Talk.
Centrists want the status quo, yes, but mostly just for themselves. This is why fascism starts with minority groups. Centrists will accept fascists "coming for the" communists/trans/migrants/etc, since it mostly isn't effecting their status quo.
Centrists want the status quo, yes, but mostly just for themselves.
That's not true at all. I know Centrists who care about everybody, and want everybody to be safe/happy/successful. They see it as a "floating tide raises all boats" kind of thing.
But only in a kind of theoretical sense. They think the status quo is best for everyone, but it's really only best for them. What is a more centrist sentiment than "our system may not be perfect, but it's the best there is"? See Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" for an eloquent condemnation of "moderates".
But only in a kind of theoretical sense. They think the status quo is best for everyone, but it’s really only best for them.
You'll have to elaborate/defend that statement. I think you're just imposing your own perspective/worldview without facts in evidence.
What is a more centrist sentiment than “our system may not be perfect, but it’s the best there is”?
That would be said by Leftists about a Leftist-bias system, or Rightists about a Rightist-bias system. What you described is not just in the domain of the Centrist. There are many "systems" that groups of humans gather around, and each system may look very different from other systems.
See Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” for an eloquent condemnation of “moderates”.
I have not read this, so apologies if I get this wrong, but I will judge this sentence based on the overall message of your comment reply.
Being a moderate does not mean settling for whatever no matter what, no matter how harmful it is. Its about trying to have a consensus that most/all can live with, in how we run our society and how we act towards each other.
For example, if everybody agreed on Leftism, then should the middle of the Leftism population be condemmed (as they would now be the Centrists of Leftism)? Or Centrists of Rightism?
If human history teaches us anything, governing from the fridge/edges never works out well for everybody else.
You aren't exactly wrong in your first two quote-responses, I will give you that. "The Left" commonly answers the second with an idea called 'eternal revolution'. The idea being that we cannot stop improving, or become so lazy in our ways that we begin to ossify into a form over function society.
I urge you to read the letter. It will raise your consciousness a hundred times more than any conversation you'll have on Lemmy today.
I urge you to read the letter. It will raise your consciousness a hundred times more than any conversation you’ll have on Lemmy today.
I'll take a look.
I think an awful lot of them actually have more leftish values, but they are convinced (and there is a huge self reinforcing bubble of that mentality, between media, politicians, and voters) that only the weakest, most watered down version of that can possibly succeed, politically.
Leftism is unpopular by definition, especially to the privileged classes. Leftism seeks to upend the status quo, and loss aversion is a problem.
Not that efforts can't be made.
Leftism is unpopular by definition
This really depends how you define "leftism".
If you mean 'whichever side of politics is left of the population's center' then sure, it can't be a majority.
If you mean 'whichever side of politics is left of the political center' then that doesn't imply it's unpopular, and there's direct electoral evidence of 'left' parties achieving a majority government.
If you mean socialism and communism, they certainly aren't unpopular by definition. If anything, their definition makes them a mass movement of the proletariat, the vast majority of a post-industrial society.
Where in the definition of leftism is it said that leftism is unpopular?
it's manifested in our reality; only the liberal branch of leftism is permitted (particularly in the united states) while the other branches are openly denigrated by moderates and rightists alike and persecuted by our governments and militias.
That's hardly definitional.
How it's possible that the political movement that aim for the benefits of the 99% is unpopular by definition?
Identity politics may be unpopular by definition, but not leftism.
Because the status quo throughout history is an extremely small number of people getting the most benefits by far and everyone else getting screwed, and everyone seeing this as normal. People are used to it, while having everyone on relatively equal footing is new and therefore scary.
Are you active in any socialist parties?
I would like to be, but I just can't figure out how to get involved in my area.
I was going to follow up with a sick zinger but instead I'll just be normal, ha.
It is important to grow the left, to turn it from like 100-1000 people in a given city into 5-10%. I can agree with that motivation, as can the vast majority of socialists. Our aim is revolution, that doesn't happen from just a few reading groups, it has to become more.
The entire country already caters to the demo you mentioned. Everything is ready-made for them. Many orgs are dominated by them, such as the DSA. You should not write off straight white cis guys but they are consistently the hardest to reach because they are dismissive of others' experiences with oppression and have been more shielded from capitalism's worst in their country, but tend to feel very entitled to an opinion about it.
Centrism is the only described characteristic that is a chosen identity and it is a political tendency, if you can call it that. It's a person with no political development whatsoever, they just vaguely cobble together an incoherent mishmash of common liberal and reactionary ideas that they can't really defend but they call themselves an outsider as if that means something regarding someone whose political life can be summed up as, "sometimes votes".
So what would it mean to try to boost efforts to recruit straight white cis dude centrists? Because the first things that would come to mind for me are usually called tailism by socialists and has a long track record of failure in the US in particular, where the US had a gargantuan labor movement that was entirely scuttled by liberal cooption and playing straight white cis dudes off of marginalized groups. There were entire unions that were segregated or disallowed black membership, for example. Those were the easiest to coopt into the red scare and, once they were used to out and isolate socialists, were then easily undermined and shrunk when their anticommunist government came for labor a couple decades later, having no radical core remsining and no material leverage.