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Yes, another top level comment about The Origins of Woke from me, in the same thread on the same week. But this is about something else. I had an epiphany while reading the book.
I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust. It's because companies are (de facto) legally required to fire racists, but they're not required to fire Marxists. In fact, firing a Marxist for merely being Marxist would be illegal in California.
California has a state law against firing people for their political beliefs, but it didn't protect James Damore, who was fired in compliance with the law against creating a hostile work environment for protected groups.
It all adds up.
Nobody yet seems to have considered that amongst normal 15-25 year old people, right-wingers are less pleasant to be around than "Marxists", and have comparatively much lower social status. I am not talking about behavioral extremists who interrupt lectures or something. I'm talking about how for some rando college student, their cool friend who is eloquent and gets invited to parties is far more likely to subscribe to some far-left ideology than a far-right one.
Who is more likely to bring you shame when you bring him around, your racist and homophobic programmer friend, or your Marxist friend who reads French literature and watches art films in his free time?
I feel like these dynamics are reflected in other age groups too, to an extent. Right wingers who are smart and eloquent have carved out their niche on the internet, but in meatspace there is a vast discrepancy in likable-human-capital.
It depends. I’d be much more embarrassed by the guy who studied French Lit. He’s much less likely to be gainfully employed, and much more likely to have public meltdowns. What I’ve found in “meatspace” is that decades of social oppression of racism has taught racists to not be openly racist while social approval has taught SJWs to throw tantrums in public.
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Depends on the type of Marxist I suppose. Freddie deBoer pulls it off without succumbing to woke ideology or being an 'unemployed, poor loser'.
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Absolutely the Marxist. He could go off at any time and have an embarrassing meltdown at someone, possibly even me, in public, about some tiny slight or microaggression. Being friends with these people is a nightmare of hoping nothing sets them off and ruins the rest of your day. I don't have to worry about that with the other guy.
Real life isn't the internet. The average Marxist friend is just a dude concerned with sounding smart and banging chicks. Maybe it's because I'm a European, but "Marxist" here doesn't mean "cares about microaggressions".
This is simply not true. The Germans cancelled Karl freakin' May for crying out loud.
For a while Euros could enjoy the time lag between cultural changes taking hold in America before they made their way to Europe, but it's over. Right now, from west to east, if you want to call yourself left wing, you have to be on board with San Francisco morality.
Are you a friend of this Karl May? If not, this is still an "internet event" for you. My friend group has actual Marxists in it, and quite a lot of left-wing people, or at least people who strongly support LGBT or whatever the American embassy has cook up for them in a given month. Nevertheless, I have not seen a public meltdown once.
Then again, we are a homogeneous Catholic nation, and our only experience with immigrants was Syrians passing through, and then a wave of SE immigrant workers who everybody agrees are nice and doesn't really think about. Funny enough, we've held a couple of BLM marches (allegedly) but they mostly didn't register. I suppose our strongest leftist factions are LGBT and feminists, but no real tantrums happen (outside of popular instagram pages "calling out misogyny").
I mean, I agree. It's just that nothing really important happens here in my country, and we have very little ammunition to cancel people with. Maybe Germany really has become like the US as of late (in terms of public-meltdown-having leftist activists gaining power), I just wouldn't know.
Europe is probably slightly bigger than just your country. You also might be surprised, there's a big push for gender self-ID laws right now, and some of the countries you'd least expect hop on the train.
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Every boy who grew in formerly Marxist Central Europe is friend of Karl May, because Marxists liked Karl May a lot, because they printed his books by the millions and made(together with Western capitalists) dozens of movies based on his works.
No surprise, these are extremely progressive works where working class heroes fight against big landlords, big ranchers, railroad and oil companies and other exploiters.
If Karl May was really cancelled in today's Germany, it is anything than victory for Marxism.
Yes, we shall judge Marxism according to the decades when Marxists were in power, not according to contemporary rainbow furry freaks, even when they wave red flags.
Just like we, for example, judge Christianity according to 15+ centuries when Christianity was in power, not according to disheveled freaks screaming at street and internet corners that the end is near.
I mention it every once in a while, I have a lot of sympathy for Legacy Marxists. The successor ideology has a knack for killing things and wearing them as a skin suit, so I'm happy to admit whatever the hell they're pushing isn't Marxism, but when they wearing it as skin suit a statement like ' "Marxist" here doesn't mean "cares about microaggressions" ' is clearly false.
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What do you mean "have to"? There are plenty of so-called "dirtbag leftists" out there.
Either already canceled and a part of the "far right", or " safe edgy".
I've met dirtbag leftists in person. None of them seemed to be considered far right by those around them. As for "safe edgy", this doesn't mean much unless you define it more specifically because unless you do that, you could always point to any non-canceled dirtbag leftist and say "he was not edgy enough".
Well, I met them on /r/stupidpol. They are "far right", other left wing subs ban you for posting there.
Sorry, I haven't spent enough time on this to give you a proper definition, but "safe edgy" would be someone like Vaush. He's plenty edgy (which occasionally gets him into trouble), but always careful to align himself with the establishment.
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I used to think cancellation was an internet thing, something you didn't have to worry about unless you were the unlucky, one in a million person who went viral. Then I saw a woman I know (who is herself very woke by my standards) get cut off from her entire social circle because of one comment. She apologized profusely but still her old friends won't hang out with her or talk to her.
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I always had way more fun with my friends who could make any joke, as opposed to the group sitting in a circle ready to joust over who's the most self-righteous.
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Definitely the effete Marxist. Everything about that guy sounds embarrassing. Is he even employed? He sounds like the kind of guy that has daddy's money, but goes around saying things like "eat the rich". The programmer is probably "racist" to the extent that he reads Steve Sailer and "homophobic" to the extent that he made a gay joke. Neither of those require my fainting couch.
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Isn't the logic you're using here a little circular? If I'm reading you right, you're saying that the Marxist friend is cool thanks to qualities he possesses that are unrelated to his political beliefs (reading French literature and watching art films), and that his non-political coolness causes people to view his political beliefs in a more positive light. So we'd expect that the programmer friend's coolness or lack thereof, likewise, would be determined by his non-political qualities.
Only, besides his occupation you haven't described any of his non-political qualities. You've just told us he's racist and homophobic. So unless you just mean that being a programmer is inherently embarrassing, we can only assume that the reason he might bring shame to you is because he might make his political beliefs known by saying something racist or homophobic. So to me it sounds like you're saying that right-wing beliefs are unpopular because the people who hold them are uncool, and the reason people who hold them are uncool is because right-wing beliefs are unpopular.
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Hmm, I dunno. That whole r/antiwork debacle was an excellent case study in the wide gulf between how radical leftists present themselves on the internet vs. how they look and act in meatspace. Whenever you see those compilations of Antifa mugshots, they generally look like weird, off-putting crusty people who smoke too much weed and bathe infrequently.
I think it comes back to the point I made here. As a rule, high-status people (attractive, charming, neurotypical, able to hold down a steady job, high income etc.) are not pursuing radical changes to the society in which they live, as they know full well they don't stand to gain as a result of these changes. The only people who can reliably be assumed to support radically changing society from the ground up are the losers in the current system. Go to any meeting of far-right or far-left people and you will be disproportionately likely to encounter people who are physically unattractive, lacking in social graces, working in unskilled jobs etc..
No question that far-right 4chan posters ranting about da joos aren't getting invited to many cool parties - but neither is Doreen, the founder of /r/antiwork, and no one is more acutely aware of that fact than they are.
part of the reason people look like losers in mugshots is because they are in an uncomfortable setting with bad lighting and anxious, having just been arrested . It's not like they can take many photos under ideal conditions , relaxed, and then use the best photo.
maybe this would have been true 15 years ago, but many of the people who are being de-platformed , exiled, or excluded are not always losers anymore. I think a fair number of successful, rich leftists in tech, NGOs, politics, law actually do seek radical change at a societal level
I don't mean they look like losers because they're in an uncomfortable setting with bad lighting and they're anxious. I mean they look like a specific category of loser: over-/under-weight, loads of horrible facial piercings, hair in natty dreadlocks and/or dyed a shade that doesn't exist in nature, face tattoos, bad teeth.
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Why would the programmer friend bring any more shame than the Marxist, assuming they have similar energy levels and manner of speaking?
I think the idea here is that the techbro will belch racist and homophobic insults at the assembled guests, while the charming Marxist will discourse eloquently on "sublimation or deconstruction of Fascist symbology in Cocteau's Orphée?" because of course that is how the right versus left/knuckledraggers versus open-minded/bitter clingers versus college-educated middle class kabuki drama plays out in the dream world of such people.
(I'm down for a good old chat about Cocteau's movie because I saw it on TV when I was about nine and loved it, but I'm not tolerating no Marxism, no matter how charming, as morally/ethically/just nice and 'one of us' superior to the sloped brow techbro).
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Nobody has considered it, because we know it's not true. I do understand how it might seem like it's true from your perspective, because people like me learned to keep their mouths shut, or pretend to agree with the regime-aligned opinions, when I'm not posting anonymously, or am not around people I trust to not flip out over disagreement. So from where you sit, all the nice people will be non-rightwing.
You're confusing cause with effect here. Your Marxist friend who reads French literature can openly joke about sending people he doesn't like to the gulag, and solicit only mild chuckles, while your "racist" "homophobic" programmer friend would shame you by saying things like "the Jussie Smollet thing is an obvious hoax" (at the time when it was unfolding, and possibly even now), or "puberty blockers are not reversible".
15-20 year olds are generally intolerable no matter their politics.
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