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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.
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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