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)
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.
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
ICE is not the police, and I can’t believe I have to state that.
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.
Obligatory:
I’ve tried to explain concepts to people. People don’t kniw they are racist. People don’t underatand why the shouldn’t use Facebook or Google. People don’t understand that trans people are not turning kids gay. I’ve tried to explain the horrors coming from privacy loss for 15 years.
Nobody listens. I’m tired boss.
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.
Purity tests.
There’s enough holier-than-thou in most leftist groups to power the Catholic church for millennia.
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.
Right-wing people embrace hierarchy. Left-wing people don’t.
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”
Basically the “no-true Scotsman” fallacy. It was kind of the same way with libertarians. Some people would unironically argue that if you weren’t in support of allowing someone to own a nuclear warhead recreationally then you “weren’t a REAL libertarian” and should stfu. Then libertarians tried running for president and got like .9% of the vote.
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.
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.
As a right wing someone, the left is well much more organised than the right. It s just at one point your circlejerk way too much for your own good. At some point individuals push idea too far for the common people. They do that cauqenit serve personal interest to virtue signaling you are best than your peer, but they do that at the détriment of the cause. Like trans ppl The normal folks can agree it s not cool to be a dixk regarding that issue. Now let’s see what came from ppl in your movement trying to one up each other to be the more virtuous of the movement. Anyone claiming to be transgendered should be treated as a biological women. Which give stuff like men in women space and something like 85% of ppl vehemently oppose. So you lost the plot and since your whole movement is based on the logic you are the majority which isn’t the case on issue like thoses u just appear to be lunatics
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.
Oh yeah the far left is also not necessarily organized. I feel like either extreme tends to converge to a dumpster fire of infighting. The moderate left is currently actually united here under the PRO (progressive) party, after a merger of the 2 largest left wing parties (our equivalents of labour and greens). And they’re the largest in the polls, but only because the center failed to solve problems and the right is splintered into many factions. Unfortunately a lot of people here are still very much right wing.
Further left there’s been plenty of infighting though, as is customary. Whether it’s the Socialist Party trying to distance themselves from the communists within their ranks, the animal party getting into a row over defence spending, or the further left party constantly fighting and calling other members of its party racists etc. We have so many parties, yet apparently not yet enough to prevent this constant fighting.
As a moderate leftist I honestly struggle sometimes to communicate with the far left wing. To me it seems like they’re constantly “purity testing” eachother and struggle with giving any kind of compromise. Despite not agreeing with them, the centrist parties like liberals and christian democrats seem like much more reliable and stable partners unfortunately.
Because they’re legitimately crazy. The far right is obviously insane as well, but in a different way.
The far left has a snowflake mentality, every individual person has to be special in some way. This causes a same general “side” but because of them all being “special” in some way, it’s limited.
The far right has the mentality of they’re all cheering for the exact same football team. They’re a mass of identical people at a football game all cheering together. It’s typically called a tribe mentality. Because of those they have a singular goal and not a “I’m special” mentality.
That’s why the ar right person asks you who you voted for and you say Kamala they have a temper tantrum. They are so into a person they’ve never met, never will meet or know nothing about them personally, but to them it’s like their team going to the super bowl intensity. So they assume you must have the exact same intensity for who you voted for. When in reality, I think Kamala was dog shit too, but I’m not voting Trump.
This veers dangerously close to the horseshoe analogy…
