That's mostly due to the rights belief in hierarchy. It doesn't matter if the person above you has different views than you if you believe their right simply because they're higher up the pecking order.
This seems like sarcasm, which is valid, but what you said is also absolutely true. The primary virtue of the left is also its biggest weakness when it comes to implementation.
Heh, don't let that fool you, they still infight like crazy despite that. Examples include the hilarious collapse of the NJP, the assassination of Rockwell (leader of the American Nazi Party) and labeling every existing neo-Nazi group "feds" because they're inevitably embarrassing and scandal-filled.
The right has their fair share of infighting. They may all want heirarchy, but they disagree on who should be on top. They can all agree on scapegoating an outgroup, but disagree on which people fall into that outgroup. Like, the ultimate endgame of fascism is for the last fascist to kill the second to last fascist for not being white enough.
They appear to be united because most of us don't go into their spaces and lurk, because, I mean, ew. If a Trump supporter came to Lemmy, they'd find people quite united against them, and if one of us went on Truth Social, we'd find them quite united against us, but that doesn't mean they actually get along internally.
Honestly I'm fairly certain they infight even harder than the left does. They just wouldn't self-critically admit to it like we would. Cause they don't self-crit.
Some of the most authoritarian people I come into contact with on any kind of regular basis are “leftists” on Lemmy.
The ones in real life are not like that. I feel like Reddit’s moderation model really encourages it, and some of them started really taking it to heart when they came to Lemmy which copied that same model.
The problem is not public arguments, but groups rejecting other groups for ideological reasons. I personally know people who are like "you can be a communist, or you can be wrong".
The reality is that there are left groups, especially far-left groups, who will already dismiss your opinion on everything for not categorically rejecting a (social) markets economy. Doesn't matter if you agree in all other points.
That reminds me of a scene from Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise, where some members of a Maoist group call others "conformists" or something to that effect because they hold different views on the finer details of communism/socialism.
The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance; thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance. (Source Wikipedia)
I don't hate most leftists (or even non-leftists for that matter). I hate the kind that hate other leftists. The lemmy.ml tankies always complain that people who disagree with them are splitting the left, when they're the ones calling everybody who vaguely disagrees with them a liberal. Not purely an ML thing though, there's plenty of this kind of person in all camps.
Political LeftRightism is a spatially encoded meta-framework of political orientation that frames ideological discourse along a singular, bipolar axis, left versus right,thereby reducing the full multidimensional landscape of political thought into a linear spectrum. As a memetic penetrator and perceptual instrument, LeftRightism functions not as a neutral map but as a meta-weapon of the ruling class: a cognitive architecture designed to channel dissent, structure debate, and neutralize system-level critique by confining political possibility to a predefined, adversarial dialectic within the system's own terms.
Operational Mechanisms:
Perceptual Confinement:
Constructs a false totality of ideological space by placing all positions, grievances, and aspirations on a left-to-right continuum. This flattens pluralistic thought into a binary schema and frames radical alternatives as fringe “extremes.”
Cognitive False Equivalence:
Establishes symmetry between left and right regardless of historical asymmetry in power, violence, or systemic entrenchment. This symmetry encourages the illusion of balance where structural inequality remains.
Controlled Opposition:
Absorbs political resistance into legible categories that the system has already immunized against. By permitting debate only between "acceptable" sides of the spectrum, it constrains opposition into predictable, ineffectual loops.
Ideological Compartmentalization:
Prevents synthesis of cross-axis or off-spectrum worldviews (e.g., spiritual leftism, post-capitalist traditionalism, decentralized communitarianism) by declaring them incoherent or invisible.
Map-as-Reality Substitution:
Through repetition and institutional embedding, LeftRightism replaces the messy, evolving reality of political life with a static cartographic abstraction, inducing conceptual dependency on the spectrum itself.
As Meta-Weapon:
Political LeftRightism operates as an epistemic instrument of enclosure, a framework-level tool of hegemony rather than a position within debate. It disguises its own structural function beneath the appearance of neutrality and exhaustiveness. By scripting political meaning into a legible diagram, it enables elites to:
Predict, manage, and diffuse unrest;
Legitimize centrism as “reasonable” and extremes as dangerous;
Fragment class solidarity into partisan identities;
Avoid exposure of vertical dynamics (top vs. bottom, ruler vs. ruled) by focusing attention horizontally.
Distinction:
Unlike left- or right-wing ideologies, which offer substantive (if partial) theories of value or structure, LeftRightism is not an ideology per se but a cartographic control mechanism—an ideological exoskeleton that shapes and constrains all ideologies that operate within it. Its power lies not in its content, but in its pre-conscious adoption as the default schema of political orientation.
I'm not interested in trying to meet in the middle with people who are happy keeping our systems of slavery in place.
Any time I have seen people attempt to change the perspective in which we look at politics (ie. The Political Compass) it is always just an avenue for right wing extremists to be validated. The Political Compass helped cause the rise of authoritarianism we see today.
Maybe if your ideology is only appealing under a certain light then it isn't an appealing ideology.
Yes I agree the political compass as a political framework pushes assumptions embedded in it's structure that reify power itself.
The political compass and "leftrightism" are the same kind of political meta-weapons. Structure that anchor a political understanding and prepare the terrain to amplify those forms of power that understand the world through an austere and reductive model.
This disempowers exactly the kind of people most vulnerable to the concentrations of power that the framework seeks to highlight but because tge framework is so reductive it weakens its users by obscuring political reality.
We need better ways to understand political realities of the world to counter them with the sufficient and required nuance.
Yugopnik made a good point on the term "Leftist" and how its so broad that it includes many different idealogies that are quite honestly conflicting, i.e. stalinists, anarchists, etc., so that it appears leftists are always fighting since they are all lumped into the same category.
I approve of any leftist as long as they are anti-authoritarian.
so that it appears leftists are always fighting since they are all lumped into the same category.
I always say it is because the left in general has its roots in old school liberal value of "think for yourself". So there typically tends to be maverick attitude and in-fighting. The best example is the Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War; you have soc dems, communists and anarchists fighting together not just against fascists, but also themselves. The right, meanwhile value order and hierarchy, so they tend to easily set aside their differences. Again, the Spanish Civil War is the best example, with the Spanish Nationalists also composed of various factions with competing agenda, but managed to set aside their differences, which made it easier to do because they had a strong man figure to rally to.
Yeah sometimes I get frustrated because I wish "the left" could be adults for five minutes and deal with the issues at hand. Like I don't care about the socialist alphabet soup if you're from PSL, or DSA, or ISA or whatever, we all agree that people are being kidnapped by I.C.E. is evil and alarming, can we just deal with this right now? We can get back to bickering about philosophy later.
But even that is complicated since there are disagreements that can't be ignored, like whether to work with democrats, who time and time again undermine and cripple movements whenever able and divert them for fundraising.
I assume you are from the US. It may be the case in your country, but it is not necessarily that the right as a whole won the war, considering that other parts of the world still have leftist and liberal politicians ruling. As a matter of fact, they have gotten more popular as Trump's brazen corruption and incompetence is setting example why not to elect populist right wing politicians.
For what it's worth, if nothing existentially happens that would stop US from becoming a nation anymore like a civil war, politics typically swing back like a pendulum. Even at the extreme, politics could dramatically swing back to normalcy and empathy. We have had countries that were under dictatorship, but are now democratic like Spain and Portugal. Because the problem with dictatorships is that they become too corrupt and reality eventually catches up to those who were swooned by initial sweet promises of demagoguery.
Of course, what I just said now may not be reassuring to you because I am speaking from a place of relative safety, so you can take it or leave it.
For me, it makes much more sense to think about it all as pop culture. I'll use America but this goes for any country.
The right leaning party represents pop culture. A dominant culture. The popular culture is American Apple pie and blue jeans with letter jackets.
The left represents everything outside the pop culture bubble. It's a larger population as a whole, but they're like little bubbles they all contain their own culture. Those cultures can conflict or merge and compliment each other. But they're individually separate.
The pop culture is always feeling threatened. It needs to maintain the status quo. Every outside sub culture is trying to fight their way into the dominant culture.
So this is why the right leaning voters trend towards rejecting things like immigrants, minorities, LGQTB and often other sub groups that are not wildly accepted by the pop culture. This is also why the left leaning groups do not. They trend towards infighting about how to do things but overall they all focus efforts on taking status away from the pop culture.
When I view politics as a clash between pop culture and sub cultures, it makes so much of it make so much more sense.
Which is also why I believe this is useful because it highlights how to win. Pop culture is much more sensitive to culture jamming. If anyone remembers 'yes men save the world' they were buried a bit, but they managed to fuck with so many things in pretty smart ways. You can really start to see how to focus efforts on them with this context I think at least.
Its a bit of a complex topic, but in basic terms reactionary thinking is kneejerk reaction, what "feels right" without broader analysis. The popular surface level, like how people complain about trans people in sports cause it "feels unfair", but when you look at the actual numbers there such a small section of out trans people in general, and even then they do pretty regular on average. Or how you here how believe all women will somehow make it "dangerous" for men dating, when in reality false accusations form less than one percent of cases, but one in four women experience assault. Whereas dialectical thinking is the thought that larger processes and symptoms influence outcomes, and one should take a step back and analyse the context and direct facts about something through critical thinking before coming to a conclusion. Like how study after study have proven that the number one factor contributing to a person engaging in violent crime is poverty, not just a person being born bad. Or how despite the narrative, immigrants commit crime at a lower percentage on average than natural born citizens. But since dialecticalism is a much bigger analysis and uses a fair amount of hypothetical and philosophical thinking you end up getting a fair amount of groups believing that their hypothetical analysis is best, such as you get with different philosophers.
It's better not to equate the two parties of the USA to the parties in a parliamentary system it's a different beast.
The Democrats are the coalition of the left of center interest groups of the current time, and Republicans the coalition of the right of center interest groups of the current time.
These groups are more the parties of the parliamentary system and run candidates in the primaries of their respective parties, and possibly as independent from time to time (particularly when they feel a bit pushed out of the main parties). Also they push these candidates at all levels (local, state, congress ect)
I would love some sort of rank choice/instant runoff ballots to make more choices easier in the voting lineup, however those who are pushing for third parties without trying to run local politicians or promoting policies ect will likely not succeed in that system either.
I'm always under the assumption that everyone can be an asshole. I had a very good friend qnd we're both vegans. To me it's just a dietary choice that i made, for her it was almost like a religion. Like when she met someone who was also a vegan or saw someone on tv that was a vegan, she always assumed that it's a good person, or just rooted for that person, no questions asked.
Political ideology is a spectrum, and I feel that Leftists tend to be as hostile towards those they deem ‘not as left’ as them, just as much as they are towards Fascists, Neo-Cons and their ilk.
It’s basically the no true Scotsman fallacy manifest.
I was recently banned for being "transphobic" for telling people what far right people believe about trans people, in the third person because I'm not far right nor have I ever been.
I've been pro-trans rights (AKA human rights) since I knew what the word "transgender" meant, which is going on twenty years or so now?
Lemmy has a REALLY bad problem with people who dont actually read comments and process them. They skim read the post, see a few keywords and then argue the point that they want to argue regardless of what the original comment was.
Yes, people got too used to the early days when the majority of reddit was still on reddit. Now that it's turning more completely into front page 2.0, it's pretty noticeable
Like there was a thread about real world uses for "A.I" and I said that its perfect for traffic management which triggered someone who went on a huge rant about carcentric cities and how we need to have more public transport and cars arent the answer. Like ok, I dont disagree but thats not really related to the question at all.
Ah okay. I get why Lemmy hides moderator actions, because some weirdos out there will harass and stalk a moderator IRL for banning them for spewing slurs everywhere and trying to post CSAM, but on the flip side it irritates me that I can't avoid whatever communities that moderator who banned me moderates.
Even with zero chip on my shoulder about the ban, it's clear that we don't have anywhere near the same definition of "transphobic" and I'd like to save us both the time of butting heads about it. Win win, if I can proactively avoid participating in a community they preside over.
Why can't we have Leftist Unity? The fucking Rightists can agree on hating "The Libz"
Why can't we agree on hating cons? Sadly I can't even get Leftist factions to agree on "LGBT Rights are based and cool", because Left-Learning TERFs exist and I've had Tankies pull "LGBT Rights is racist because it means forcing Western Ideals where they don't belong" crap on me.
People on the left love to "well actually..." every issue, every opinion, because nothing in the world is 100%, but when something is 85%+ we should just stfu about it, agree and move on to more pressing issues.
It's the third bit from this episode. After the fantastic Death Note Simpsons parody, I wish Western cartoons that do anime style parody episodes would always have actual Japanese studios do it. It's so much more effective when it looks like the real thing.
Fun fact, I once alluded to this on reddit's worldnews and they associated me with Hitler because apparently trying to say there is more than one dimension is trying to whitewash Nazism.
Troll factories can get defensive, don't touch what they work with.
The better strategy would be to change what a Republican is and stands for, then we could all have our cake and the idiots in our country can still feel like they won.
Democrat can mean or represent literally anything, even if they did a 180 and began supporting Trump, and my mother will still hate them, because they're Democrats.
you can't spin those fascists into anything but shit!
ehhhhhh... Traditional, old school Elephants were still very environmentally conscious, turn nationalism into a positive trait. Patriots for nature and equal pay from the established woke billionaires! Be a real American, soldier!
I would like more unity with people who share alignment with me. Except for anyone who has a slightly different opinion than me on certain issues, screw those people.
It's from an episode that does a terribly shallow parody of anime. Ya know the kind where there's tentacle monsters everywhere despite me not being able to name a single anime I've ever seen that has that, just Western Parodies of anime and everyone talks in horrible Engrish in forced asian accents, even though not even dubbers as inept as 4Kids do that?
Basically the "I'm 65 and the only Japanese Cartoon I've ever seen is Speed Racer, and maybe parts of one episode of Pokemon my nephew was watching? But I've still totally got this guys!" school of anime parodies.
I fucking hate shallow parodies.
The same episode also parodied a lot of 80's cartoons; Namely Smurfs and GI Joe, and did a much better job of doing so.... Mostly because the writers had actually seen Smurfs and GI Joe.
If there's an actual debate you've got to define terms. People's definitions of 'leftist' can be pretty wild, especially if the debate is between an American and... mostly anyone outside America.
I have seen people waxing poetic about Imperial Japan and the Jakarta Method who consider themselves leftist, while at the same time associate outright NazBols with the left.
So 'what do you actually mean by tankie/liberal?' will usually cut through a lot of debate perv noise.
The bigger problem is that politics today isn't BS association to what "left" is versus BS association to what "right" is, it's becoming those that are willing to work within a system versus those that are just willing to exploit it. Trying to map out left and right is a concept so absurd no amount of coordinate systems is going to make people across language barriers and international barriers agree on how you label them.
Reasonable people that disagree are going to have more disagreements than an echo chamber masking a defrauding scheme that is open to be bought by the highest bidders.
It's a dubious place to be in. Those that believe in the system, and working within it...and the dangers of working outside of it...are realizing that there is no in-the-system countermeasure to those willing to work outside-the-system.
Those who believe in law and order can't use law and order to wrangle in...the majority of the "law" and "order" that are working in extra-legal and extra-ordinary ways.
Edit to add. We've been down this road before. Look at 1930s Germany. Not everyone was down with Dolfy. But we know how trying to fix it inside the system ended up.
There's a reason the American revolution wasn't just a group of people known for just peacefully protesting and criticizing until a new king rolled over.
See Ken Loach’s Land & Freedom on how factionalism and in-fighting within the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil war allowed the fascist Junta to win.
When I go hiking... I am going through certain mental forms of anguish as well as worrying about my water, the heat of the sun, and the fear of dying alone. of like a heart attack. because sometimes I really push myself. On this journey every once in a while I see a comrade and they're either moving past me at a higher rate or moving away because they've already reached their goal. Yet at the end of the day, it is just the time in which it takes me to get to my destination. But yet eventually we all reach the end of the trail. We observed different things and we value different things. We should talk about that.
Are we talking about actual leftist infighting, or mistaking liberals for the left and calling it infighting?
Also I'm almost certain that the actual left infights far less than the right. The only reason two Trump administrations hasn't started the literal fourth reich yet is because they infight so hard that they can't stick to any plan.
centrists say everything is all progressives fault. But also that progressives will never be allowed to have any place of authority or decision making in the party. They'd sooner court republicans. So they will lose the youth vote for good and go extinct, assuming the country survives their idiocy at all.
Any reasoning that is mainly centered around giving people specific labels, and then making sweeping generalizations about what everyone with that label does and why it’s therefore okay to hate anyone you have chosen to apply that label to because of things some other people have done, is almost always some bullshit.
Also, yes, it’s ironic that you’re posting this under their specific meme.
Political polarization is a weapon, heard of the phrase "divide and conquer"
They know how to churn up, scramble and disempower those on the side of anti-domination
And that's why all Kulaks will get the bullet and the red empire must extinguish all alternative off the face of this planet
and every other planet around all stars
Cue the speech at the end of Team America World Police
Simpsons did it!
Futurama is just a slightly different Simpsons!
We are enemies now
I was going to comment that OPs meme sums up db0 really well, but this one does that even better.
You can't tell me how to anarchy bro
One thing the right is good at doing is falling in line, no matter that the agenda being pushed.
That's mostly due to the rights belief in hierarchy. It doesn't matter if the person above you has different views than you if you believe their right simply because they're higher up the pecking order.
One thing I've always wondered, who/what decides their hierarchy?
Thry guy who finds himself on top determines the hierarchy until someone supplants him ny whatever means.
Money
God
(Aka their pastor)
Oh deer
Yeah the flaws of leftists is understanding what they are voting for and not operating purely on loyalty.
This seems like sarcasm, which is valid, but what you said is also absolutely true. The primary virtue of the left is also its biggest weakness when it comes to implementation.
When the system is broken, that is indeed a flaw
Gotta maintain that rigid tribal culture so it supports whoever steals the leadership role!
Heh, don't let that fool you, they still infight like crazy despite that. Examples include the hilarious collapse of the NJP, the assassination of Rockwell (leader of the American Nazi Party) and labeling every existing neo-Nazi group "feds" because they're inevitably embarrassing and scandal-filled.
The right has their fair share of infighting. They may all want heirarchy, but they disagree on who should be on top. They can all agree on scapegoating an outgroup, but disagree on which people fall into that outgroup. Like, the ultimate endgame of fascism is for the last fascist to kill the second to last fascist for not being white enough.
They appear to be united because most of us don't go into their spaces and lurk, because, I mean, ew. If a Trump supporter came to Lemmy, they'd find people quite united against them, and if one of us went on Truth Social, we'd find them quite united against us, but that doesn't mean they actually get along internally.
Honestly I'm fairly certain they infight even harder than the left does. They just wouldn't self-critically admit to it like we would. Cause they don't self-crit.
The right opposes free thought and favors conformity to support the privileged few.
The left favors free thought and opposes conformity, because that would impede social progress.
Yeah, I wonder why one of those groups is likely to have public arguments.
Not necessarily. Some leftists demand conformity in beliefs. "If you don't believe XYZ, you're a shill/neoliberal/fascist etc."
I feel like favoring free thought and opposing conformity leads to arguments, but demanding conformity leads to enemies (like this meme).
Some of the most authoritarian people I come into contact with on any kind of regular basis are “leftists” on Lemmy.
The ones in real life are not like that. I feel like Reddit’s moderation model really encourages it, and some of them started really taking it to heart when they came to Lemmy which copied that same model.
The problem is not public arguments, but groups rejecting other groups for ideological reasons. I personally know people who are like "you can be a communist, or you can be wrong".
The reality is that there are left groups, especially far-left groups, who will already dismiss your opinion on everything for not categorically rejecting a (social) markets economy. Doesn't matter if you agree in all other points.
A fundamental disagreement on a foundational principle is going to be a hurdle, indeed.
That reminds me of a scene from Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise, where some members of a Maoist group call others "conformists" or something to that effect because they hold different views on the finer details of communism/socialism.
It's a different version of the tolerance paradox
The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance; thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance. (Source Wikipedia)
tale as old as time
I didn't see this film until the 2010s, and I couldn't believe how accurately it lampooned my local scene.
err, what movie is it? Yes, I live in a cave.
Monty Python - Life of Brian
Not sure, but I think maybe Life of Brian?
God the assassination scene, so accurate.
I don't hate most leftists (or even non-leftists for that matter). I hate the kind that hate other leftists. The lemmy.ml tankies always complain that people who disagree with them are splitting the left, when they're the ones calling everybody who vaguely disagrees with them a liberal. Not purely an ML thing though, there's plenty of this kind of person in all camps.
I think lacking self awareness is a requirement to be a tankie
But after they called me a liberal for supporting Ukraine, they said they respect anarchists. They must be our friends! /s
Political LeftRightism (n.)
Definition:
Political LeftRightism is a spatially encoded meta-framework of political orientation that frames ideological discourse along a singular, bipolar axis, left versus right,thereby reducing the full multidimensional landscape of political thought into a linear spectrum. As a memetic penetrator and perceptual instrument, LeftRightism functions not as a neutral map but as a meta-weapon of the ruling class: a cognitive architecture designed to channel dissent, structure debate, and neutralize system-level critique by confining political possibility to a predefined, adversarial dialectic within the system's own terms.
Operational Mechanisms:
Perceptual Confinement: Constructs a false totality of ideological space by placing all positions, grievances, and aspirations on a left-to-right continuum. This flattens pluralistic thought into a binary schema and frames radical alternatives as fringe “extremes.”
Cognitive False Equivalence: Establishes symmetry between left and right regardless of historical asymmetry in power, violence, or systemic entrenchment. This symmetry encourages the illusion of balance where structural inequality remains.
Controlled Opposition: Absorbs political resistance into legible categories that the system has already immunized against. By permitting debate only between "acceptable" sides of the spectrum, it constrains opposition into predictable, ineffectual loops.
Ideological Compartmentalization: Prevents synthesis of cross-axis or off-spectrum worldviews (e.g., spiritual leftism, post-capitalist traditionalism, decentralized communitarianism) by declaring them incoherent or invisible.
Map-as-Reality Substitution: Through repetition and institutional embedding, LeftRightism replaces the messy, evolving reality of political life with a static cartographic abstraction, inducing conceptual dependency on the spectrum itself.
As Meta-Weapon: Political LeftRightism operates as an epistemic instrument of enclosure, a framework-level tool of hegemony rather than a position within debate. It disguises its own structural function beneath the appearance of neutrality and exhaustiveness. By scripting political meaning into a legible diagram, it enables elites to:
Predict, manage, and diffuse unrest;
Legitimize centrism as “reasonable” and extremes as dangerous;
Fragment class solidarity into partisan identities;
Avoid exposure of vertical dynamics (top vs. bottom, ruler vs. ruled) by focusing attention horizontally.
Distinction: Unlike left- or right-wing ideologies, which offer substantive (if partial) theories of value or structure, LeftRightism is not an ideology per se but a cartographic control mechanism—an ideological exoskeleton that shapes and constrains all ideologies that operate within it. Its power lies not in its content, but in its pre-conscious adoption as the default schema of political orientation.
If partisan identities are different enough that they don't ally then that means their differences are too great.
The "leftrigthism framework" itself could be obscuring the possibilities for alliance
I'm not interested in trying to meet in the middle with people who are happy keeping our systems of slavery in place.
Any time I have seen people attempt to change the perspective in which we look at politics (ie. The Political Compass) it is always just an avenue for right wing extremists to be validated. The Political Compass helped cause the rise of authoritarianism we see today.
Maybe if your ideology is only appealing under a certain light then it isn't an appealing ideology.
Yes I agree the political compass as a political framework pushes assumptions embedded in it's structure that reify power itself.
The political compass and "leftrightism" are the same kind of political meta-weapons. Structure that anchor a political understanding and prepare the terrain to amplify those forms of power that understand the world through an austere and reductive model.
This disempowers exactly the kind of people most vulnerable to the concentrations of power that the framework seeks to highlight but because tge framework is so reductive it weakens its users by obscuring political reality.
We need better ways to understand political realities of the world to counter them with the sufficient and required nuance.
Yugopnik made a good point on the term "Leftist" and how its so broad that it includes many different idealogies that are quite honestly conflicting, i.e. stalinists, anarchists, etc., so that it appears leftists are always fighting since they are all lumped into the same category.
I approve of any leftist as long as they are anti-authoritarian.
I always say it is because the left in general has its roots in old school liberal value of "think for yourself". So there typically tends to be maverick attitude and in-fighting. The best example is the Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War; you have soc dems, communists and anarchists fighting together not just against fascists, but also themselves. The right, meanwhile value order and hierarchy, so they tend to easily set aside their differences. Again, the Spanish Civil War is the best example, with the Spanish Nationalists also composed of various factions with competing agenda, but managed to set aside their differences, which made it easier to do because they had a strong man figure to rally to.
And the right won that war, which goes to show the value of unity
Yeah sometimes I get frustrated because I wish "the left" could be adults for five minutes and deal with the issues at hand. Like I don't care about the socialist alphabet soup if you're from PSL, or DSA, or ISA or whatever, we all agree that people are being kidnapped by I.C.E. is evil and alarming, can we just deal with this right now? We can get back to bickering about philosophy later.
But even that is complicated since there are disagreements that can't be ignored, like whether to work with democrats, who time and time again undermine and cripple movements whenever able and divert them for fundraising.
I assume you are from the US. It may be the case in your country, but it is not necessarily that the right as a whole won the war, considering that other parts of the world still have leftist and liberal politicians ruling. As a matter of fact, they have gotten more popular as Trump's brazen corruption and incompetence is setting example why not to elect populist right wing politicians.
For what it's worth, if nothing existentially happens that would stop US from becoming a nation anymore like a civil war, politics typically swing back like a pendulum. Even at the extreme, politics could dramatically swing back to normalcy and empathy. We have had countries that were under dictatorship, but are now democratic like Spain and Portugal. Because the problem with dictatorships is that they become too corrupt and reality eventually catches up to those who were swooned by initial sweet promises of demagoguery.
Of course, what I just said now may not be reassuring to you because I am speaking from a place of relative safety, so you can take it or leave it.
I am American, but I was more making a point about how the rights tendency to fall in line makes them more effective, and maybe we should emulate that
For me, it makes much more sense to think about it all as pop culture. I'll use America but this goes for any country.
The right leaning party represents pop culture. A dominant culture. The popular culture is American Apple pie and blue jeans with letter jackets.
The left represents everything outside the pop culture bubble. It's a larger population as a whole, but they're like little bubbles they all contain their own culture. Those cultures can conflict or merge and compliment each other. But they're individually separate.
The pop culture is always feeling threatened. It needs to maintain the status quo. Every outside sub culture is trying to fight their way into the dominant culture.
So this is why the right leaning voters trend towards rejecting things like immigrants, minorities, LGQTB and often other sub groups that are not wildly accepted by the pop culture. This is also why the left leaning groups do not. They trend towards infighting about how to do things but overall they all focus efforts on taking status away from the pop culture.
When I view politics as a clash between pop culture and sub cultures, it makes so much of it make so much more sense.
Which is also why I believe this is useful because it highlights how to win. Pop culture is much more sensitive to culture jamming. If anyone remembers 'yes men save the world' they were buried a bit, but they managed to fuck with so many things in pretty smart ways. You can really start to see how to focus efforts on them with this context I think at least.
To me it sounds like you're starting to broach on the concept of reactionary vs dialectical analysis
I'm not sure what that means. I'm interested though. Is it something you can explain here or is there some topics you can't suggest I read up on
Its a bit of a complex topic, but in basic terms reactionary thinking is kneejerk reaction, what "feels right" without broader analysis. The popular surface level, like how people complain about trans people in sports cause it "feels unfair", but when you look at the actual numbers there such a small section of out trans people in general, and even then they do pretty regular on average. Or how you here how believe all women will somehow make it "dangerous" for men dating, when in reality false accusations form less than one percent of cases, but one in four women experience assault. Whereas dialectical thinking is the thought that larger processes and symptoms influence outcomes, and one should take a step back and analyse the context and direct facts about something through critical thinking before coming to a conclusion. Like how study after study have proven that the number one factor contributing to a person engaging in violent crime is poverty, not just a person being born bad. Or how despite the narrative, immigrants commit crime at a lower percentage on average than natural born citizens. But since dialecticalism is a much bigger analysis and uses a fair amount of hypothetical and philosophical thinking you end up getting a fair amount of groups believing that their hypothetical analysis is best, such as you get with different philosophers.
Sucks that the system in the USA is broken but until it's fixed and we have more than two parties, democrats are the left.
It's better not to equate the two parties of the USA to the parties in a parliamentary system it's a different beast.
The Democrats are the coalition of the left of center interest groups of the current time, and Republicans the coalition of the right of center interest groups of the current time.
These groups are more the parties of the parliamentary system and run candidates in the primaries of their respective parties, and possibly as independent from time to time (particularly when they feel a bit pushed out of the main parties). Also they push these candidates at all levels (local, state, congress ect)
I would love some sort of rank choice/instant runoff ballots to make more choices easier in the voting lineup, however those who are pushing for third parties without trying to run local politicians or promoting policies ect will likely not succeed in that system either.
So it's accurate but they're both wrong because
He is the left.
He shouldn't even be trying to converse with literal USSR advocates and literal anarchists as if they were part of his base.
Look what they did to my boi.
I have never met a leftist I didn't like
but I only consider somebody a leftist if they respect human rights.
I'm always under the assumption that everyone can be an asshole. I had a very good friend qnd we're both vegans. To me it's just a dietary choice that i made, for her it was almost like a religion. Like when she met someone who was also a vegan or saw someone on tv that was a vegan, she always assumed that it's a good person, or just rooted for that person, no questions asked.
Unfortunately all the wanna-be Pol Pots out there also consider themselves to be leftists.
Political ideology is a spectrum, and I feel that Leftists tend to be as hostile towards those they deem ‘not as left’ as them, just as much as they are towards Fascists, Neo-Cons and their ilk.
It’s basically the no true Scotsman fallacy manifest.
I'll start my own leftism, with Blackjack and hookers! If fact, forget the blackjack. Ah, screw the whole thing.
this whole platform be like:
I was recently banned for being "transphobic" for telling people what far right people believe about trans people, in the third person because I'm not far right nor have I ever been.
I've been pro-trans rights (AKA human rights) since I knew what the word "transgender" meant, which is going on twenty years or so now?
Lemmy has a REALLY bad problem with people who dont actually read comments and process them. They skim read the post, see a few keywords and then argue the point that they want to argue regardless of what the original comment was.
But... That's like 80% of the internet.
Yes, people got too used to the early days when the majority of reddit was still on reddit. Now that it's turning more completely into front page 2.0, it's pretty noticeable
Ive noticed it a lot more on here.
Like there was a thread about real world uses for "A.I" and I said that its perfect for traffic management which triggered someone who went on a huge rant about carcentric cities and how we need to have more public transport and cars arent the answer. Like ok, I dont disagree but thats not really related to the question at all.
I was actually back and forth a bit with an admin among other folks, likely the one who nuked the thread and banned me.
Nobody was being rude, and the last thing I said was agreeing with them.
I'm banned from like 6 blahaj zone communities for one comment I made where me and two other users discussed the overlap of trans and gay.
This one was a lemmy.world, specifically 196.
Same mods I think.
Ah okay. I get why Lemmy hides moderator actions, because some weirdos out there will harass and stalk a moderator IRL for banning them for spewing slurs everywhere and trying to post CSAM, but on the flip side it irritates me that I can't avoid whatever communities that moderator who banned me moderates.
Even with zero chip on my shoulder about the ban, it's clear that we don't have anywhere near the same definition of "transphobic" and I'd like to save us both the time of butting heads about it. Win win, if I can proactively avoid participating in a community they preside over.
Lemmy doesn't hide moderator actions. The modlog is completely public by default, an instance admin can change that but doing so is not normal.
It says "moderator" banned me.
I made this for a comment (about small-data images, jpegs) days ago:
Half the replies in this thread: so true bestie, except fuck those guys for not being left enough
Reminder to all my homies: If any of ya'll think trans rights are a bargaining chip, you aint leftist enough for me!
Ok but who thinks that, I've not seen anything about that anywhere on lemmy, so it must not be very common
Why can't we have Leftist Unity? The fucking Rightists can agree on hating "The Libz"
Why can't we agree on hating cons? Sadly I can't even get Leftist factions to agree on "LGBT Rights are based and cool", because Left-Learning TERFs exist and I've had Tankies pull "LGBT Rights is racist because it means forcing Western Ideals where they don't belong" crap on me.
Of course the only reply to this is a "srs leftist" who immediately proclaims you an enemy for shit you didn't say
We can't have leftist unity because the right has never run short on useful idiots
Because being a leftist just isnt as fun when you dont hate everyone and everything. Hate is fun
We can't even use the best slurs because we're too considerate.
People on the left love to "well actually..." every issue, every opinion, because nothing in the world is 100%, but when something is 85%+ we should just stfu about it, agree and move on to more pressing issues.
But of course we can't, so we keep losing.
your lack of participation enabled an actual genocider. think things have gotten better in the last 5 months for gaza? ukraine?
you think you'll ever take responsibility for your own poor choices?
It's the third bit from this episode. After the fantastic Death Note Simpsons parody, I wish Western cartoons that do anime style parody episodes would always have actual Japanese studios do it. It's so much more effective when it looks like the real thing.
Futurama Reincarnated
Thanks
Anybody else remember Kappa Mikey?
Nobody is left enough for anyone else on the left. You agree with me on an issue but differ on execution? You may as well be Trump!
Its almost as if a single dimension is not big enough to describe the diversity of human political thought.
Fun fact, I once alluded to this on reddit's worldnews and they associated me with Hitler because apparently trying to say there is more than one dimension is trying to whitewash Nazism.
Troll factories can get defensive, don't touch what they work with.
I mean, not that I agree that you're Hitler, but the only other possible choice was Stalin, so...
There are inherently more ways to imagine changes than to point at the status quo.
This meme reminded me of all the different flavours of Christianity.
The better strategy would be to change what a Republican is and stands for, then we could all have our cake and the idiots in our country can still feel like they won.
Democrat can mean or represent literally anything, even if they did a 180 and began supporting Trump, and my mother will still hate them, because they're Democrats.
you can't spin those fascists into anything but shit!
ehhhhhh... Traditional, old school Elephants were still very environmentally conscious, turn nationalism into a positive trait. Patriots for nature and equal pay from the established woke billionaires! Be a real American, soldier!
I would like more unity with people who share alignment with me. Except for anyone who has a slightly different opinion than me on certain issues, screw those people.
Just so we're clear, democrats are blue conservatives and are not leftists.
The meme is still accurate though. Why does Futurama look so anime? Did i miss a new episode?
Season 6 episode 26
It's from an episode that does a terribly shallow parody of anime. Ya know the kind where there's tentacle monsters everywhere despite me not being able to name a single anime I've ever seen that has that, just Western Parodies of anime and everyone talks in horrible Engrish in forced asian accents, even though not even dubbers as inept as 4Kids do that?
Basically the "I'm 65 and the only Japanese Cartoon I've ever seen is Speed Racer, and maybe parts of one episode of Pokemon my nephew was watching? But I've still totally got this guys!" school of anime parodies.
I fucking hate shallow parodies.
The same episode also parodied a lot of 80's cartoons; Namely Smurfs and GI Joe, and did a much better job of doing so.... Mostly because the writers had actually seen Smurfs and GI Joe.
Circular firing squad
I've seen situations here on lemmy where I would cause it if I where to argue with someone
I am leftist
booba
Fryla isn't real, she can't hurt you
If there's an actual debate you've got to define terms. People's definitions of 'leftist' can be pretty wild, especially if the debate is between an American and... mostly anyone outside America.
I have seen people waxing poetic about Imperial Japan and the Jakarta Method who consider themselves leftist, while at the same time associate outright NazBols with the left.
So 'what do you actually mean by tankie/liberal?' will usually cut through a lot of debate perv noise.
And people love the no true Scotsman fallacy and constantly throw out that the person isn’t really this or that
What? Who? Where? That's an absolutely wild take.
The bigger problem is that politics today isn't BS association to what "left" is versus BS association to what "right" is, it's becoming those that are willing to work within a system versus those that are just willing to exploit it. Trying to map out left and right is a concept so absurd no amount of coordinate systems is going to make people across language barriers and international barriers agree on how you label them.
Reasonable people that disagree are going to have more disagreements than an echo chamber masking a defrauding scheme that is open to be bought by the highest bidders.
It's a dubious place to be in. Those that believe in the system, and working within it...and the dangers of working outside of it...are realizing that there is no in-the-system countermeasure to those willing to work outside-the-system.
Those who believe in law and order can't use law and order to wrangle in...the majority of the "law" and "order" that are working in extra-legal and extra-ordinary ways.
Edit to add. We've been down this road before. Look at 1930s Germany. Not everyone was down with Dolfy. But we know how trying to fix it inside the system ended up.
There's a reason the American revolution wasn't just a group of people known for just peacefully protesting and criticizing until a new king rolled over.
See Ken Loach’s Land & Freedom on how factionalism and in-fighting within the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil war allowed the fascist Junta to win.
When I go hiking... I am going through certain mental forms of anguish as well as worrying about my water, the heat of the sun, and the fear of dying alone. of like a heart attack. because sometimes I really push myself. On this journey every once in a while I see a comrade and they're either moving past me at a higher rate or moving away because they've already reached their goal. Yet at the end of the day, it is just the time in which it takes me to get to my destination. But yet eventually we all reach the end of the trail. We observed different things and we value different things. We should talk about that.
Are we talking about actual leftist infighting, or mistaking liberals for the left and calling it infighting?
Also I'm almost certain that the actual left infights far less than the right. The only reason two Trump administrations hasn't started the literal fourth reich yet is because they infight so hard that they can't stick to any plan.
centrists say everything is all progressives fault. But also that progressives will never be allowed to have any place of authority or decision making in the party. They'd sooner court republicans. So they will lose the youth vote for good and go extinct, assuming the country survives their idiocy at all.
Centrists will blend quietly into the right the way that Homer backs his way into a hedge.
Liberals, as in advocates for liberalism and not a liberal party (which doesn't even exist in the USA), are the entire left of the USA.
I seriously wish leftist unity was more of a thing. And no, liberals, I’m not talking about you.
Is this oneof those /s moments or a /r/wooosh moment?
Liberals are only considered “the left” in the USA. I am not in the USA.
Like you have a point, it just feels like it's against the spirit of the post.
I see liberals (at least in the US) as folks that mean well, but maybe aren't so informed. They can have a seat at my table.
There’s only so many times that liberals can side with right wingers on issues that I care about before I recognize them as enemies.
Although I recognize that people can change. But those unwilling to are not welcome to me. At that point they stop being liberals anyway.
I totally respect having boundaries like that. Some folks just won't hear a word you say.
Any reasoning that is mainly centered around giving people specific labels, and then making sweeping generalizations about what everyone with that label does and why it’s therefore okay to hate anyone you have chosen to apply that label to because of things some other people have done, is almost always some bullshit.
Also, yes, it’s ironic that you’re posting this under their specific meme.
Almost like different countries are unique with unique people, places and problems… but that seems to be a nuanced idea so you’d probably reject it
Burgerlander detected, opinion discarded.
Youre right. The United States of America is so special we should have our own political spectrum.
Let's call it... the imperial political spectrum. That way you can call democrats leftists on the imperial political spectrum!
Happy?
My money’s on wooosh but it could be either one tbh.
Kek
Don't like what you see on lemmy? That's your fault. Use the tools given to you to block what you dont want to see.
Expecting others to change their posting habits so you dont have to lift a finger to curate your feed is ridiculous.
You can start practicing blocking people on me. Just click those 3 vertical dots and click block user.
Thanks, appreciate it.
Why do leftists adopt all the most horrible traits of trump supporters?
Political polarization is a weapon, heard of the phrase "divide and conquer" They know how to churn up, scramble and disempower those on the side of anti-domination And that's why all Kulaks will get the bullet and the red empire must extinguish all alternative off the face of this planet and every other planet around all stars
Cue the speech at the end of Team America World Police
So peace was never an option