geekhack Community > Off Topic
whats wrong with the left?
wellington1869:
serious question.
where did all the conspiracy theorists and democracy haters, who have apparently taken over the 'left' in our popular culture and politics (e.g. huffpo and dailykos), come from?
It wasnt long ago that the 'left' defended democracy and human rights, respected things like evidence, and fought against religious fascism.
what changed? how did it change so radically in such a short time?
help me see a difference between neo-nazis and today's left. Because I cant.
audioave10:
I think Ripster may have slightly over-simplified the answer. LOL
sorry Welly, I hate politics!
wellington1869:
--- Quote from: kishy;222273 ---I've found it's typically conservatives who go nuts with conspiracy theories, FWIW.
--- End quote ---
i find as many leftists engage in them as enthusiastically. 9/11 "truthers" are a great recent example.
Academic Leftists in general today see modernity itself as a 'western conspiracy' (!). Certainly leftists float all kinds of conspiracy theories about the jews controlling either capitalism (as marx and later hitler had it) or media or worse.
Leftists regularly engage in a religious apocolyptic vision of total war whcih they feel is necessary to 'clean the slate' before some kind of worldwide utopianism breaks out spontaneously, if only the 'single source of evil' (jews, america, democracy, 'the west'', 'the cia', etc) can be erased. All other evil in the world is seen merely as a reaction to our 'original sin' of some kind. All this is classic conspiratorial thought.
--- Quote ---
Democracy hating comes naturally with an evaluation of how defective it is in the US.
--- End quote ---
ya, but kishy its one thing to criticize in order to make it more perfect; its another to criticize in order to delegitimize it altogether. What I see in so many 'leftists' today is the delegitimization of the theory and practice of democracy, altogether. Ie, seriously anti-democratic. This happens in both indirect and direct ways.
indirect: "american democracy is defective so who are you to say so-and-so muslim regime needs democracy?" [ie, implicitly thus defending a religious-fascistic regime by preventing any criticism of it. Those who criticize it are then seen either as 'western imperialists' or as 'muslim traitors' - exactly as the fascistic regime would see it]. Keep in mind these are "leftists" doing this.
direct: democracy is just an imposition of 'western' values on the world and thus a form of 'imperialism'; other 'people' have 'their own systems' of social organization [for example, fascism, maoism, or islamism!] and we have to 'respect' that and those may in fact be better than democracy (mao makes the trains run on time!).
Keep in mind this is today's leftists saying things like this.
audioave10:
that's more than left...that's the...
wellington1869:
--- Quote from: audioave10;222279 ---
sorry Welly, I hate politics!
--- End quote ---
;-) no worries bro ;-) I chuckled too.
ya, what i worry about is how the looney left keeps taking over the left, just as the looney right keeps taking over the right.
and i dont see any difference between the looney left and the looney right, who together squeeze out and silence the vast sea of moderates in the center-left and center-right.
we've paid so much attention to the tea party, we raise alarms and we put them under microscopes. We ought to be doing the exact same thing to the looney left who are every bit as dangerous and supportive of fascism as far as I can see.
what i worry about is how the center-left and the center-right dont seem to have the tools with which to ward off this dual-infestation.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version