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I'm increasingly fascinated by how counter-productive the current modus operandi of political discourse within the Left and Liberal wings of Western society has become.
When in a political discussion, I try to rarely make sloganeering arguments - very few buzzwords, no contentious examples, generally attempting to keep a big picture in mind, clearly distinguishing between what I believe to be a core principle and what I think could be a likely hypothesis, etc. Of course I sometimes take the bait or let spite and Schadenfreude get the better of me, but generally I think I'm pretty good at discussing politics and have been able to have nice and constructive conversations with people across the political spectrum : I think it's precisely because of the rather tentative way I go about defending or questioning ideas that the discussions almost always conclude on a cordial tone, completely irrespective of how close we are ideologically or if anyone involved was really convinced of the other's perspective.
It has long been remarked that the Left has an issue with both internal and external discourse, pushing for alienating purity tests and distorting supposedly open discussions into show trials the moment an unsavoury subtext or implication can be gleaned from the other's words - no matter how minor or semantic. From a Marxist-Leninist perspective, this makes some sense to me as an internal approach to maintain ideological unity - it has a martial aspect to it that places a very high value on cohesion and loyalty, exactly what you want from an organised Vanguard movement waiting to strike. As an external form of discussion geared towards convincing the public at large or gaining new recruits to your cause, it's obviously abysmal and essentially filters out normal people in record speed.
As a former Marxist-Leninist myself, who was in such a "Vanguard party" in my home of Austria way back during Obama's second term/Trump's first years in office (and who now, over a decade later, feels more sympathy for Mussolini than Lenin), it's been interesting to see how this internal form of discourse (which I guess we now would call wokeism or cancel culture) has also completely taken over any approach to external messaging and discussing. When I was in a Marxist org over a decade ago, we would go to worker's clubs, employee's strikes, union meetings and such in the hope of recruiting or latently indoctrinating the working-class there. The explicit modus operandi that we were taught and regularly coached on was to insist on opinions of theirs that were bauchlinks - "left-wing by gut feeling", essentially. Even though by the mid 2010's most working-class people in Austria outside of some flagship unions were already comfortably captured by the far-right, we spoke to them exclusively through the lens of what we could agree on, not what they were wrong about believing. Of course, this made for a lot of friendly conversations and momentary feelings of having made progress. But in the end, these actions had next to zero effect since most of the Marxist org members were bourgeois students slobs and therefore neither trusted nor taken seriously by the workers, and we really didn't have a good answer on immigration and the refugee crisis (since we were wrong on this issue, as the Left still is today).
Still, this approach to engaging a political conversation seemed to me productive and understanding of how politics functions - you need to get people on your side. That's easier when you make them feel like you and they already believe alot of the same things.
I won't belabour how much cancel culture et all has ruined the Left and tarnished its public image - we all know. What's more interesting to me is that even among less overtly woke or even moderate/conservative liberals, there is a growing attitude of guilt by association and implication - and a pleasure to brand someone as far-right, a nazi, a "populist", especially if said person has any kind of public presence and influence. We see this across the UK, Germany, Austria, especially when it comes to Trump or Ukraine. It's practical effect is essentially them saying "please see yourself as our political opposition and consider yourself excluded from our political project" - the exact opposite of what you want to achieve in a political discussion! Joe Rogan has of course become the archetypal example of this. The list of influential people who became right-wingers because one side of the political spectrum welcomed them with few strings attached and the other told them they were irredeemable and devoid of decency is long and growing.
What's the idea behind this kind of discourse? It seems so alien to any kind of strategic understanding of politics and campaigning to me, especially now when the liberal order is more vulnerable than ever. Are they still this oblivious to the disillusionment and loss of trust in institutions that is well entrenched in Western society today? Is it some kind of some kind of moral self-validation first and foremost? Where does this desire to grow your own political opposition come from?
As someone who spends time on Tumblr (and thus sees a lot of people on the left behaving the way you describe), I've written a lot about this, both here and elsewhere. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
In short, they're operating on a very different definition of "democracy" than you are.
No, you need to get elite institutions on your side. The peasant masses are irrelevant.
Except it's not "our political project" they see themselves casting people out of, it's "polite society," it's "the right side of history"… in short, you are being excommunicated from the One True Church, cast into the outer darkness with the damned, unless and until you repent and make penance. And, of course, shunning only works if everyone does it, thus those who fail to shun must be shunned themselves.
How does a firebrand Puritan preacher accumulate a flock? Not by friendly chats "exclusively through the lens of what we could agree on," but through fire-and-brimstone sermons denouncing them as damned sinners, and demanding they repent.
I come back to my classroom analogy (it's in one of those links above). It's long been a noted phenomenon — the subject of jokes, even — that whenever someone on the Left says "we need to have a conversation about [X]," what they actually mean is "I'm going to lecture you about [X], and you're going to sit down, shut up, and listen uncritically to what I say." Which I bring up because it's also what a teacher usually means when saying they "need to have a conversation" with a student and/or their parents about the student's behavior.
How does a teacher "get students on her side"? By asserting her authority, telling them to sit down, be quiet, and listen up; and punishing those who fail to obey.
That's the way the classroom works. The Expert speaks, and everyone else listens. Your grade, your status, is based on how well you absorb what Teacher says, and how flawlessly you parrot it back. Then you get to college, and its more of the same. Professor gives you the Correct Position, and your progress is based on how well you parrot it back. And then you get your degree that says you're an Expert now, so you either stay and become Professor, and tell the kids How It Is; or you leave into the world… and tell all the non-Experts How It Is. In both cases, when you speak, everyone is supposed to Listen to Teacher; that's how it's always worked.
And if students aren't learning the lesson? Well, maybe the teacher isn't matching their learning styles ("Democrats have a messaging problem"). Or maybe the kids are being distracted ("pipelines for alt-right disinformation like Musk's x.com") and you need to shut down anything that keeps them from Listening to Teacher. Or maybe they're just being stubborn and refusing to accept that the curriculum is Correct, and thus they are misbehaving and need to be punished; perhaps even expelled. In any event, the curriculum, the Lesson, is never wrong, no matter how large a fraction of the student body disagrees with it.
No, from what I've seen, they're quite aware of it, and do see it as a problem. They just don't see it as a problem with the institutions, but a problem with the people. If you don't find the mainstream media credible anymore? Then you're willingly choosing to believe lies over The Truth, and you're what needs fixed. You need to be made to trust the institutions again, even if it means literal re-education camps.
It's not a desire to "grow their own political opposition," it's a desire to make people submit, to punish disagreement until people stop disagreeing with them. To make all the Bad Students Listen To Teacher. To denounce all the sinners, heretics, apostates, and infidels, and impose all the punishments their priestly powers allow them to inflict, until all repent and accept the dogmas of the One True Church. Because error has no rights.
I think you accidentally hit on a pert of the appeal of this style of discussion and why it’s so popular. The people who tend to be on the left are basically overeducated and therefore have adopted the ethos of the classroom in which you are to sit and take notes and regurgitate the answers given by an authority. We’re sending most of our current crop of young adults through a system where by the time they reach full maturity, they’ve spent 20 years in school under the thumb of a teacher, and any sports they played were on teams with a coach.
I’ve had run ins with some of them when I suggest that it’s perfectly reasonable to get some education on the arts and literature by reading texts for yourself, learning to draw by simply getting some very basic instructions and doing it yourself. Or that history can be learned by … reading about history. I don’t think it’s possible to become a professional without a bit of classroom teaching. But im often shocked at how completely the very concept of autodidacts breaks modern brains when it used to be the norm. Abraham Lincoln was basically an autodidact— most lawyers of the time began by studying law on their own and taking an exam. That was it. And up until the advent of the modern Prussian model of education, even classroom instruction was more of a discussion than a lecture. It was structured, but kids were reading and talking about what they read by mathematics equivalent of high school.
This is something that often makes me fear for the future. The entire society is over structured and therefore any thinking for oneself, creativity, or initiative is being slowly ground out of society in favor of more formal education and activities.
I think it's superimportant not to discount the effect that social media has had on this, too. People of all political stripes are easily seduced by "likes," and nothing gets more passionate likes than when one stakes out positions that make themselves and their followers feel more virtuous than the baddies over on the other side. It's not just an echo chamber, in which one hears their own positions reverberate, but a stadium in which the response is the roar of the crowd in deafening agreement.
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