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Notes -
Today I got a response to an old comment in which I'd argued
@desolation objected, noting that leftist activism is fully willing to make people uncomfortable:
In the interest of further discussion, I'm moving my response to the main thread.
I'll stand by the first statement, and emphasize that it refers to hobby-spaces-leaning-left, not extremists. I'm not sure what led you to this month-old post, but it was in response to a theory that "Leftists (especially LGBT-focused) congregate in highly socialized communities where every small action toward The Cause is socially reinforced." The OP had constructed a rather elaborate model of left-affiliated communities which portrayed them as hugboxing evangelists. In addition to being rather uncharitable, this overlooks an alternate theory: if a space is reasonably nice, will it end up full of leftists?
As for the second, yes and no. Yes, quoting Kendi or otherwise engaging in that flavor of anti-*ism is more socially acceptable than just being *ist. That's exactly why it drives away fewer users. It's both harder to deploy (and thus more rare) and less likely to offend leftists, centrists, or even most right-wingers.
If a community bans slurs, they will exclude some free speech absolutists. So long as there are more of those on the right, that will select for leftists. Banning slurs is a much more popular mod policy than banning "you can't be racist against X," probably because slurs are cheap and easy to deploy anywhere. Case study: Xbox Live. Would banning any discussion of critical race theory have had any impact on the population of 13yo gamers? What about banning the word "retard"? Apply the same conclusion to Discord, and we have a mechanism by which a neutral community adopts some "left-wing" norms merely by picking the rules with the most relevance. Repeat over months or years, banning the few who get really upset about censorship, and we end up with a left-leaning community which gets along smoothly.
Maybe every once in a while someone in that community gets away with...I'm actually struggling to think of anti-racist slurs? "Colonizer?" Maybe someone says that and right-wingers feel unwanted, or doxxing threats make them feel unsafe. It's also possible that the community enters a purity spiral and implodes. But this is rare, because we're talking about boring hobby groups, not activists.
Honestly, I don't see where mainstream publications come into this at all. The comments section for NYT op-eds is by no means a tight-knit hobbyist community. And while the media's stance on doxxing ranges from sympathetic to enthusiastic, I'm skeptical that such outlets have endorsed using slurs.
Then it's not really a meaningful statement, because what you're emphasising is a transitionary state lasting from about 2 weeks to 2 months, before it ends up being run solely by and for leftist extremists.
It will end up full of leftist entryists seeking to co-opt it and turn it into a leftist extremist space, if that's what you mean (it probably isn't.) Overly permissive and nice groups simply don't have the antibodies necessary to reject leftist appropriation efforts, which is why they're natural targets for them. Most notably, "nerd culture" saw this happen to it, because nerds, being outcasts themselves, were very reluctant to "become bad guys" by banishing anybody, and look where it's got them: shoved out of their own communities and hobbies that they grew from the ground up, and replaced by plasticky faux-nerds with only the basest knowledge of the hobbies who are there to skim influence and money off the communities they parasitise.
Again, the point in time at which you're choosing to look is not the end of the evolution of the community. More leftists get added to the staff over time, and they start enforcing "no slurs" extremely selectively to weed out the people they hate (non-leftists). This completes the degeneration of the community into an extremist leftist enclave where far leftists can openly call for the doxxing and death of anyone even suspected of being right-wing without consequence, but saying "tranny" gets you immediately banned. (See: twitter, reddit)
It's not rare at all. If it can happen to a knitting forum it can happen anywhere, and it will, because leftists are always on the lookout for things to subvert. Because extreme leftists fundamentally cannot create, only destroy. They can't meme and have to steal right-wing memes, they can't come up with original concepts for movies and shows and must resort to perverting existing IPs, and they can't create successful communities, only subvert them. And they never have any kind of actual plan for what happens after their fanciful revolution fantasy, that's always someone else's problem -- they're just in it for the burning down and looting of the existing order. Remember the "what will your job be in the leftist utopia" thread where not one person said labourer? No creation. Only destruction.
Even with the caveat "extreme leftists," this is a little too much boo outgroup. Where's your evidence that "extreme leftists" are just inherently less creative, more destructive, and fundamentally devoted to "subverting" things than "extreme rightists"? It's fine to complain about leftists and "converged" organizations, but do not get too comfortable talking about your outgroup as if it's a given that they are all alien invaders. This is still a place for testing shady thinking and talking as if you want everyone to be included, not for kicking up your feet and shit-talking about how your outgroup is just the worst.
Here's a citation from goofy mail prank man:
"Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principles, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them.
But leftist activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists’ hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred."
What's the point of being a leftist? Change society? Don't you already have the power within yourself to behave with humility and charity to help those you perceive as oppressed?
Isn't the need to change others the expression of a will to power as explained above?
You can write a post expanding on that idea if you like. What you can't do is describe your outgroup in a hostile and uncharitable way as if we all accept as a given that "Yes, they are like that" even if "they" would not agree with your characterization.
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