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Here in Australia we’ve seen the latest example of ideological purity movements devouring themselves. What I find interesting about this particular case is that, to me, it accurately represents what seems to have happened in a lot of left wing movements over the last 20+ years.
Co-founder and former Queensland state leader of The Greens party, Drew Hutton, has failed in his appeal to his own party to reverse the revocation of his life membership. Hutton helped found the Greens with Bob Brown, both in Queensland (1990) and federally (1991), the initial ideological basis was for creating a party with “a historic mission to try to push the world to a more sustainable footing”. The parties platform that I recall, growing up as an Australian in the 90’s, was for combatting climate change, stopping deforestation, protecting fisheries, reefs and banning live export of cattle and other stock.
But both Bob Brown and Drew Hutton have long since departed from the front lines of the parties political battles. In their place we have seen a succession of leaders that promote environmentalism, but increasingly campaign on social justice issues. A party that (until the recent federal election) were making the majority of their electoral ground in inner city electorates (inner Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane).
Hutton was embroiled in drama from a twitter post (what else could cause so much drama) made over a year ago, which led to him being labelled a trans-phobe and promptly to the revocation of his life membership after he refused demands to delete the post and the comments below it. Today it was announced that the year long appeal process has not landed in his favour, but is in fact keeping with the original revocation. But if he’s espousing hatred and division online while somewhat representing his political party that he cofounded, then surely that’s a just result?
My initial thoughts were along the lines of “grandpa didn’t keep up to date with the terminology and unknowingly crossed the line”, however, after a bit of research it becomes clear that Hutton didn’t even make the hurtful comments, rather that he “provided a platform for others to do so”. Which after further research, revealed that he had publicly questioned his Party in their actions of removing membership from a different member for voicing concerns over a proposed amendment from the NSW Greens to change “pregnant people” from “pregnant women” in an upcoming act.
Interesting. I’ve run out of steam now, it’s a been a long day on site, but I wanted to post this and hear what other thoughts The Motte have - Australian and International.
Links:
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Note: reposted to this weeks thread as I foolishly did not check the day of the week.
I have never understood why green parties are woke. Their ideology is naturally anti woke.
Remove fossil fuels from society and you are going to have a society that reflects that material basis. A society without fossil fuels doing most of the work is reliant on male physical strength. If agriculture is going to be entirely organic and sustainable people are going to be skinny. Much of feminism builds on people leaning on the state or insurance companies for their old age and care instead of family. Social structures are seen as oppressive by the left if people can recieve a pension and be cared for by the state. A large state that takes care of people requires industrial civilization. Without a huge state people need families, children, and social structures for support.
My impression based on left-leaning friends & acquaintances (of which I have very, very many) is twofold:
The first is a general aesthetic. When people draw images for the green future, it's just a really nice-looking, organic neighbourhood, farms with happy animals, it's clean, people still live in modern-style housing right next to a beautiful forest. On the other side, when climate change and fossil fuels are shown, it's dirty, it's ugly same-looking cities with large heavy industry, animals in pain from ugly, pustulous wounds, people in cramped apartments far away from any green (which probably is dead anyway). On that level, it really is just the good ol' politics of in-favor-of-everything-good-against-everything-bad; If given the choice, absolutely everyone would take the former over the latter, if there are no other ramifications (which at least aren't shown nor talked about). Woke is mostly the same; It generally sells itself first and foremost on extremely benign-sounding slogans and tries to just ignore, talk away and suppress the mention of any and all problems. Of course trans is just about letting a small minority live as they please, of course women's rights are only about not being taken advantage of by evil men, of course anti-racism/colonialism is just about giving formerly oppressed groups their freedom back, etc. And the - primarily - women who make up the bulk of the support really aren't unpleasant for the most part, often the opposite, they just want everyone to get along, everyone to work towards the obvious, common good and to exclude the minority of evil men. If you just avoid calling their politics into question - which in daily life will be 99% irrelevant anyway - they are usually exceptionally helpful and pro-social. But, of course, they have a massive, noble-lie shaped hole (and also, they can be irritating busybodies, but that's more manageable).
The second is a general distrust of the profit motive. Several of my (mostly male) friends who are much more successful than me (managing-your-own-company or high-tier BigCorp middle-manager successful) have had more than enough personal experience of engaging in what they perceive as anti-social behaviour just to keep their company/section afloat (stuff like cutting out a newly emerging competitor with legally grey tactics, deliberately hiring badly-paid interns with the promise of a permanent position over and over, actively managing a funnel into addictive behaviour for your freemium game, etc.). They genuinely feel bad about this and want to restructure society so that this isn't done anymore in the future. They're rarely communists and are aware of its failure modes, they want markets, but their experience makes them believe that a many of the arguments against renewables are as bullshit as the old pro-smoking arguments; If you put up just the right limits on the market, we will have a great, green future!
Tbh the latter isn't even that far from my own position; It's just that I'm much more suspicious of government intervention blocking progress and protecting old, wasteful structures in an unholy BigState BigCorp marriage (also frequently called the cathedral).
I've seen a lot of this too. It's pretty simply a lack of awareness about the last 50+ years of the political-economics of employment law and state regulation. I've written about this before.
The champagne liberals who engage with the "capitalism - but nice!" fantasy fail to see that many of the market dislocations that result in a race to the anti-social bottom have been created by well-intentioned but economically illiterate federal and state policy. "The road to hell..." and all that.
One of the more effective coups of the left has been to make the term "deregulation" associated with Enron and Lehmann Brothers scale fiascos in the popular conscious. When, in reality, deregulation means more, cheaper, and better houses in the places that need them most. Or, as my self-linked comment outlines, a much lower friction coefficient in hiring. Or making it possible to cut women's hair without demonstrating you can shave a man with a straight razor. (I'll admit that the "licensing to become a barber" meme is a but of a trope at this point.)
But change is scary and real meritocracy might mean you aren't quite as sharp as you think you are. Credentialism is the soft mattress of the careerist - so long as they/them have the right master's degree from the right university, they can probably secure a coastal sinecure for between $150,000 - $250,000 depending on level of technical rigor and direct connection to revenue generation. These people who want "capitalism - but nice!" sure are excited about changing the marketplace, so long as their jobs aren't effected. "No, you see, I am an enabler for my team. I remove obstacles for them so they can do the really cool work! I'm just so thankful I get to be around such amazing people," says the functionary who will later fire one of their staff for being a "bad culture fit."
When you throw in a disproportionate fixation on egalitarianism, it gets even worse. That's trading both sides of the distribution curve for the fat middle and stasis. If we deregulated at scale, yes, there would be even more giga-billionaries. But the wage floor for those who can simply work full time would shoot up as well. Those who would suffer? That sliver between about 80 - 90th percentile who are the poster children for bullshit jobs; HR managers, compliance (literally a regulation created job), some level of accounting, lots of legal-ish jobs, tons and tons of "report A into slot b" information processing jobs. And that's the sliver that contains enough people with enough extra time and extra income that their votes and organizing matter. And that's the sliver that, over the last 50 years, has zoomed to the left.
I'm not anywhere near the 'sperg level of Elon to say whatever he said about compassion being the worst virtue ever. In fact, as an
LARPingpracticing Catholic, I try to live virtues like that daily. But I do it of my own accord in my private life. I am against trying to turn personal, emotional relationships with virtue and metaphysical ethics into a political platform or party. Because, if you do that, you give yourself license to ruin a whole lot of materially important policy.I'm someone who subscribes to the capitalism but nice theory. I read your linked previous comment. I think some mandatory training is stupid, but I think you're picking some low-handing fruit. Capitalism but nice can just as easily be EU telling phone manufacturers to stop making proprietary phone chargers when USB exists, or that John Deere needs to stop making their tractors unrepairable by third-parties for arbitrary reasons. Good or bad depend entirely on which law we're talking about.
Strictly speaking EU hasn't forbidden proprietary phone chargers. They've only mandated that phones must also support USB-C charging. Of course for phones this is in practise meaningless but it's quite relevant for some other devices covered under the same directive.
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