I keep hearing people say that the far-left is significantly less organised, more fragmented than the far-right. Why is that? (And to be clear: I’m asking about the far-left, not just the left in general (though they may be linked)
For the most part it boils down to the right being largely status quo. They want to go back to a state that while in it’s own way is anachronistic and a fantasy is still based on something old and familiar and easy to envision. The left, at least in the places where it isn’t already the status quo, is always somewhat nebulous due to the desire for progress but there is a host of splits based around individual peoples comforts and privileges or their view of what new things and societies to attempt and what those things should look like. You see similar divisions in art spaces because there’s multiple visions and disciplines and means of achieving a similar goal.
A lot of the division on the left exists due to a fairly foundational theory held by some but not others : that minority rights and protections are nessisary in all cases because if you can argue effectively against removing one set of rights then that argument will prove effective in the removal of other civil rights. The most vulnerable need protection not just because it is the right ethical thing to do but because in the game theory of protections it’s the only locktight way to ensure safety for everyone’s rights.
However many prejudices exist. Many leftists want exceptions to protections because defending all is difficult. When you exist in a democracy one has to appeal to the many and the prejudice against “the undeserving” whatever state that implies is always a hard sell to people who cannot apply empathy. Hierarchy is important to many people even though they might not think of it in those terms. They want to be the “deserving” over the “undeserving” and with that moral authority strip the protection from others. The shattered left is not immune to this desire, it just tends to be more choosy. Some look at incremental change as abhorrent and as a moral and ethical betrayal, others see the sacrifice of the hardest to protect as a temporary means to buy time and power so that change can be made and you can see some of those people make too much peace with the literal blood toll associated with that action by doubling down.
To be leftist is to be aware of a multitude of pains and since we all individually have only so much mental space to triage everyone prioritizes differently.
These anarchists just need a good, strong leader.
Is it though? At least here in the Netherlands, the far right is not much better. There’s constant infighting, egos tripping over each other, new “messiahs” taking over and crashing down. We have JA21 and van Haga who both split off of the FvD when the mask went fully off. We have groep Markuszower who split off of the PVV. And on top of that parties like the BBB and people like Mona Keijzer who try to claim the spotlight. The originally liberal VVD trying to get a piece of the pie.
I’m happy for it though. Much rather this than an organized right.
But yeah, leftists can definitely be a purity contest sometimes.
At least here in the Netherlands, the far right is not much better
That doesn’t mean necessarily that the far left isn’t disorganised, only that the far right is as disorganised. If the far right is likewise disorganised over there, it doesn’t mean the far left isn’t, only that they’re both disorganised.
As for the rest of your comment, I’m afraid I’m not sure of who most of them people/groups are, though that’s purely because I’m from the Netherlands and don’t have knowledge of how your government works. But I’ll be sure to look into your country, it sounds like it could be interesting to see the disorganisation on both sides of the political spectrum.
This is a many faceted problem, but I’ll throw in a few more that I didn’t quite see touched on.
For a lot of people on the left, if you’re more left than they are you’re a tankie and if you’re not as left you’re a fascist.
There’s a lot of worry about purity. For example, there’s people who don’t buy Harry Potter stuff because the money goes to JK Rowling who spends money on anti trans groups. That’s sensible. But then there’s people who think you’re a bad person if you’ve enjoyed it, ever. Or didn’t get rid of the books once you found out.
This is part of the same thought process that makes people have to say how someone was bad, no matter who they were. “Oh you like Rob Ross he was in the military you know”.
The most extreme examples of this are when they go full horseshoe and support Republicans because they are so concerned with flaws the Democrats have, because they think that’ll somehow get people to rise up.
On the left, it’s more important to do nothing wrong than to do something right.
Funny enough, here in England, something similar to that happened on the far right: there’s this political party called ‘Reform UK’ which is considered the far-right, refuses to align with the Conservative Party (centre-right), but then one of their own disagreed and pushed for Reform UK to adopt even further-right policies. But when they refused to budge, he splintered and formed his own political party, ‘Restore Britain’, which is even further to the right of Reform Uk, but the two parties refuse to work together/form a coalition.
I do wonder if that’s an intentional form of radical flanking to make Reform appear more moderate to floating voters.
The problem with that is, Restore Britain has taken a significant share of former Reform and Conservative votes (I don’t know the exact stats off the top of my head, but in the last few local elections and by-elections, the right wing vote was pretty split between the 3 factions). Plus, for the last few years, the Labour Party (centre left-left wing party) has been the main target/political weapon of Reform, mainly since the last general election (wether that’s simply because Labour won the election seems likely, but also the party’s dwindling support under Keir Starmer before Burnham took over and boosted its numbers). Its also alleged that the Restore leader had a major falling out with the Reform leader; partially causing the split.
I see what you mean, yes.
Yeah, if it really was one of Farage (leader of Reform)’s strategies to make reform more appealing/get more votes, it’s ridiculously stupid — then again, it’s wouldn’t be the dumbest thing he did, nor will it be his last. It almost wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if it came to light…
In other words: the super-critical far-left pricks ruin it for the rest of the left wing non-pricks?
Ain’t that just the way
Innit
my head-canon tells me the right’s goal can be simplified down to whatever makes me the most money/power
the left, on the other hand, can have multiple ways and layers and sensitivities on what can be said is the morally-correct way to handle things.
A lot of rightists go “jews suck lmao” or whatever everywhere possible IRL, which leads to people with similar opinions talking with them and leftists staying the fuck away.
The “far-left” is usually not triggered by everyday interactions. Asking people about their politics directly may come off as weird, especially if the ideas that were to follow are not widespread and/or they have not researched politics much. Btw, “I don’t speak politics” (I once used to claim this) is often the audience to be targeted with right wing ideas even without realizing.
Oh, and oftentimes, the government is a direct enemy to the far-left. Only rarely not (Ukrainian anarchists are siding with Ukraine, Christiania is making tourism money for Denmark, etc).
In Canada, it’s because they threw out all the labor rights people and replaced them with people adding letters to LGBTQ+TS+ BLT…
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The far right only have to organise around a handful of simplistic ideas. They talk in tabloid headlines. Smear shit and hope the millionaire fash send money your way. It’s as easy as flipping hamburgers.
The left have to deal with the complexities of reality. They need to talk with stakeholders and learn from specialists in a given subject at a given time. They are limited by language that can express the complexity of our societies and what makes them run well.
I’m not saying that’s the full explanation, but it’s inherently harder to organise something more complex and creative. It’s easier to organise a dirty protest.
The far right is funded by deep pockets and is not attacked by the establishment Republicans.
If the Democratic Party establishment would see the left as an asset rather than a threat then things might change.
Well, that’s the thing about the Democratic Party. They actually aren’t left of center. They are performatively left on a few social issues when it’s convenient.
The Democratic Party is at left as it can be without touching underlying capitalist structure, which is to say, it is not properly left at all.
I agree with this, and it’s why movements like OWS and BLM have more or less done nothing. Those are complex concepts with lists of things that need to be done. The right has “Lower taxes” and “Let us be racist”. The left though has nuanced concepts and new things that people have never heard of. People hear “Lower taxes” and know what that means. Universal healthcare is new and complex, and so the right reduces it to something they understand, “higher taxes” and other fearmongering. Meanwhile we’re trying to show amortization rates of providing care to everyone and the right has simple phrases.
Rinse and repeat for everything. We tried “Defund police” but the right only heard “No more police” because there is a lot of nuance to “defund police”, like demilitarizing and focusing on sending in people who can actually help. “Climate change” is a complex nuanced subject that takes a long time to understand, but the right reduces it to “They want to take away your truck”.
Gay marriage I think worked because it was a very simple message, allow gays to marry. They tried to reduce it however they could but in that case their arguments were the harder ones to follow. I think we need to think about how we describe things, and try to avoid from the beginning needing to explain concept subjects to (I’m sorry but) simple people. Universal healthcare should simply mean “We run a government level insurance program, like all of the other countries, so no one gets denied coverage”. Or something like that.
“No more police” is a pretty simple idea that seems to have slipped by you so idk
“No more police” is an idealistic concept that would never make it out of committee and is routinely used by the right to “prove” to themselves that we can’t be taken seriously. “Demilitarized police” instead is a concept that could be actually implemented, and could get support from both the people and politicians and could actually be implemented.
If you seriously believe that we could pivot next year to “no more police” then you’re deluding yourself, there’s no politician in this entire country who would stake their career on that. Nice to dream, but no way in reality it would ever happen, and using it only fuels the right.
I’m not looking for a politician to take anything seriously. I am looking for we the people to remake this godforsaken place, and that means implementing our goals directly, which includes dismantling every police station and sheriff’s office.
Seriously the police are kidnapping people at random and you still don’t get that the system is broken?
I’m not so unreasonable to assume that no one who is currently wearing a badge and gun can rehabilitate themselves into productive members of society, but the systems that they work as a part of need shut the fuck down.
Is this the “left infighting” that i hear about
When you go far enough left and right on the spectrum they become indiscernible.
ICE is not the police, and I can’t believe I have to state that.
ICE is a natural evolution of the way American police have operated for decades now. It’s wild that people don’t see that. They didn’t just appear from nowhere.
Are they worse than police? Arguably yes, but they didn’t just appear spontaneously from nowhere. Our failure to reign in the police and force them to obey the law led directly to the behavior we now see from ICE. We’ve let the white supremacists run wild and refine their techniques for a long time now.
The fraternal order of police supports ICE.
It depends on the place, many cities and states have rules that prevent local police from helping ICE. I’m not saying that police don’t need reform because I think that’s what the whole ‘defund the police’ movement is really about, but to say that all police support ICE is inaccurate - otherwise sanctuary cities simply wouldn’t be allowed to exist. Now, there aren’t nearly as many sanctuary cities as I’d like - and more states would do well to follow the example of states like Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, etc.
That’s another topic entirely, though.
As others mentioned, ICE are not police.
On top of that again it’s idealism vs realism. Yes idealism is what it could be, but the system isn’t changing anytime soon. I’m sorry, but it’s not. Unless the majority of people suddenly mobilize, but I’ve been waiting now 30 years and at multiple points thought maybe they finally would, but it’s not happening. Once you realize that it’s idealism, then you can move into realistic options.
I’m not looking for a politician to take anything seriously. I am looking for we the people to remake this godforsaken place,
And this is why those movements fail.
They only need to convince like 200 million people to their specific ideals, piece of cake.
I had a hysterical family member reading the DSA and saying “they want to abolish the police and prisons, that’s crazy to just let all those people walk the streets.”
I attempted to clarify that the prison industrial complex is so corrupt and broken it needs to be completely replaced and their reply was, “well the website doesn’t say that so what am I supposed to believe?”
This is the reason why we decide to infight instead. It’s so much less effort than using the mental energy it takes to hang with other visibly different or distasteful people. Better just spend the days figuring out how to deliver sick owns to people who are within our reach and not prepared because they were expecting to be fighting against Maga.
This is how pussies fight but you bet it’s easier than cooperating with anyone in a plurality
Caring about things like “facts” and “not hurting people” is a real drag.
I was at a Moral Mondays protest in Raleigh NC a while back and someone with a bullhorn called out “What do we want?!”
And the crowd yelled back, all at once:
“Racial justice!”
“Marriage equality!”
“Immigration reform!”
“Police reform!”
“Impeach Trump!”
“Close Guantanamo!”
“Better pay for teachers!”
…and a bunch of other demands too many to understand in a crowd that large, and while I knew I was with the right people, I had a sinking feeling about our chances of achieving much of anything.
That sounds like an exceptionally unplanned rally, or the wrong person had the bullhorn. But we have to start somewhere so well done all.
that’s the funniest thing i’ve read in a while
Purity tests.
There’s enough holier-than-thou in most leftist groups to power the Catholic church for millennia.
Yeah people on the right are lot more likely to overlook their disagreements as long as they can agree on a few things
And it spreads everywhere. Can’t even partake in pride march because of my wrong cultural views. Simply being gay isn’t enough anymore - need to sing up for the package deal.
What are these views, if I may ask? I have yet to see a pride march that is very exclusionary
Last pride march here had a ton of Palestinian flags there for example that not only has nothing to do with pride but is also a hilariously ignorant thing to do considering how gays get treated in most Muslim-majority countries.
It’s a left-wing event pretty much. If you’re gay who leans right you’re effectively straight.
But you weren’t excluded for not having a palestine flag, were you?
You could participate the same way as everone else.
The palestinians are fighting a similar fight as LGBT+ people because they are oppressed because of their identity. The people who bring Palestine flags want to show their support of the people affected by the genocide. They very rarely support the oppressive policies against LGBT+ People.
Pride should be against any sort of oppression.
No, I’m not excluded. I just don’t want to march for an unrelated cause that people smuggle in which I don’t support. They wouldn’t tolerate me waving an Israeli flag there either, nor should they.
One of these nations is the victim of genocide right now, the other one is commiting it.
An Israel flag is similarly not appreciated like a russian or american flag would be. When the Ukraine war started, a lot of people also brought ukraine flags to unrelated protests.
It is also not a fully unrelated cause, as the palestine flag also stands for an oppressed group like the pride flag. By joining the march you are protesting against oppression, so it isn’t that far off.
If you are against one kind of oppression but not against another, you aren’t really against oppression.
If you are against one kind of oppression but not against another, you aren’t really against oppression.
Which circles back to my original point: simply being gay is no longer good enough.
“A similar fight because they are oppressed because of their identity” Which phrase like that u can include Hitler btw Having Palestinian flag at a pride dont help Palestinian. But it make lgbtq members being forced into a box that has nothing to do with them
It doesn’t help that the right infiltrates and murders left wing movements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_Wars
I’m not a historian so I’m struggling to remember specific details. “People’s History of the United States” by Zinn includes many examples that went like “People wanted to organize for something better” -> “Capitalists said no, and had the police beat up and arrest people”
Apparently Gloria Steinem was funded by the CIA. Also, Jackson Pollock was a psy-op, more specifically, the supposed value of the dogshit he created.
That’s a dishonest oversimplification of Gloria Steinem’s situation, and you’re going to have to elaborate on Pollock. (But it sounds like you’re already biased against him too far to be objective, dismissing his contributions to modern art)
You sound like a bot. My opinions on Steinem and Pollock are based on recent revelations that they were both funded by the CIA. I couldn’t care less about either one 5 years ago. The whole modern art movement was apparently a psy-op in order to discredit anyone farther (further?) left than Hillary Clinton.
The “whole modern art movement”? I’m not disputing the CIA’s history of nefarious dealings or infiltrating groups to put their thumb on the scale, but the scope of that claim exceeds even COINTELPRO.
What they did was support a movement already in place because they felt it helped against Communism somehow. (And the USSR was doing pretty much the same thing the other direction) And it’s not like they’re signing a bunch of checks “CIA” and handing them out to artists and organizers, it was soft support through foundations and museums and stuff. It doesn’t detract from their work. It kinda sounds like you half-watched one YouTube video.
So you acknowledge CIA fuckery, but have to resort to ad hominem attacks and whataboutism just like Kirk, Shapiro and Peterson. You and assholes like you are exactly the reason Left-wing politics are so ineffectual, hence proving my point.
Right-wing people embrace hierarchy. Left-wing people don’t.
Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.
We aren’t talking about Democrats.
Is it really more disorganized? Ive seen and heard of far right groups tearing each other apart over minor differences of values or infidelity. Maybe its simply a matter of complexity of goals. The left is trying to build a new and fair world, all while preserving as much of humanity and the planet as possible. The far right on the other hand seems to concern itself almost entirely with destroying progress the left makes, they seem to not care at all about the what comes after or the harm that is caused by their changes. So they only need to agree on what needs to go, and don’t need to agree on what comes next because they haven’t thought about it and don’t care who has to live in the squalor they leave behind.
The far right on the other hand seems to concern itself almost entirely with destroying progress the left makes
And it’s far far easier to destroy than it is to create.
Because, contrary to what they say, a lot of leftists are intolerant of opinions that differ from their own. A lot of them have a black-white mentality, where either you are 100% with them or otherwise you are against them and might as well be Hitler incarnate. They live in extreme bubbles which just enforces this behaviour. You can see this very well in some subreddits and also here on Lemmy, since Lemmy is very left leaning.
In german we have this saying:
“Treffen sich 2 Linke, bilden sich drei Splittergruppen”
“Two leftists meet, 3 splintergroups are formed”.
Two leftists meet in the forest. Both die.
The whole principle of right wing thought is strict vertical hierarchies. For their moral flaws, strict vertical hierarchies are a pretty efficient way to organize the average person. The whole principle of left wing thought is flattened, distributed hierarchies. For their moral virtues, decentralized flat hierarchies are pretty slow to organize. It’s a lot simpler to fall in behind an authority figure than participate in never ending sub-sub-subcommittees.
It’s hard to unify around a course of action when your whole thing is incorporating diverse perspectives and rejecting centralization. I’m not saying it’s not the right thing to do, it is, but it presents inherent challenges.
In other words, taking differing opinions into account and building things is hard. Deferring to what a “superior” is telling you is easy.
In short, yes
