this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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I really think the left have lost a whole ass generation and don't even realize it.
Nah, some of have been calling out right wing propaganda and the impact it's having on the political scene for a while now. And it's not just teens. Right wing propaganda has infested the left as well, to the point where you still have people repeating confirmed propaganda from the 2016 election because they've internalized it and can't let it go.
It's not that the left has bad messaging or unpopular ideas, it's that there are a ton of cynics under the big tent. Cynics who actively poison outreach efforts because they are intellectually lazy, but love their own farts.
Good ideas, but terrible messaging. For example, imagine you wanted to sell Appalachia on the idea that the coal market is in decline so we should look at expanding other market sectors in the region so the entire region doesn't increasingly resemble dead mine towns as time goes on. What's the single worst possible way you could try to express that idea to those people?
"I'm going to put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business" - Hillary Clinton, 2016.
As far as the US goes, Democrats are basically the best you get that has any chance of winning an election and she was their choice for 2016. I even held my nose and voted for her in the general (but not in the primary).
I won't argue that progressives and the like shouldn't be trying to either drag the party leftward or organize at a scale that they can actually win elections at some levels without needing the name Democrat behind them.
They have, they're just now waking up and realizing there are actual stakes involved and thr right has a 50 year headstart.
The way I see it, the left had a good go and had the right on the ropes and lost it in the last 15 - 20 years. Not 50.
I saw a systematic push to pretty much remove the left from the internet and weight the algorithms towards right wing issues while vilifying the left as pompous know it all's and out of touch with the regular man. Which is crazy because 15 years ago most people would have agreed with so many of the values that are vilified today.
Canadian sub reddits is a perfect example. One day accounts started showing up and laying into anyone looking to do discuss politics. And then hammered them over and over. Then a new sub showed up specifically for left leaning Canadians that drew the ones who didn't want confrontation towards. At the same time the moderation team started recruiting and low and behold were hammered with right wing applications until they have what is essentially moderators from the r/The_Donald. Now there's multiple Canadian sub reddits and almost all are heavy right leaning to the point you can't post even moderate stuff. It all has to be headlines like "Lookie what these brown fellas are doing now".
Crazy times. Even saw voices that were kind of cool become social pariahs as online users seemed to unanimously agree that "science guy 1" was faking it and pompous and "science guy 2" was also a giant piece of shit. We're not even leftists but were people who would convince people to think critically and question even your own views. Could not let those channels and people grow. We all had to read about their vocal fry every time they posted a video. Decimated engagement for every voice the left tended to enjoy and who acted as lightning rods for different ideas and values such as common sense and logic were knee capped by the denizens of these newly seized territories who all unanimously agreed that these people were annoying. And since we're social creatures, if you have 1000 voices saying someone is annoying and 10 say "what the fuck is going on in this comment section" we all tend to really focus on the annoying bits wondering about it ourselves until its just a truth. Meanwhile middle aged Comedian with views like "Students are shitting in litter boxes" and "Maybe wearing masks will kill you" were amplified.
Internet was a new frontier and seems like groups that had resources really seized on the opportunity to take back territory so they could relay a foundation that was pro their own cause. I think the left had a big part in helping without realizing it because they just didn't care to see what was happening. Like a death by 10 000 paper cuts.
30 years ago rightwing talk radio was in full swing, already influencing huge swaths of America with their formulated, repeated talking points (something "the left" or even the Democratic party still can't do), Rush Limbaugh had a TV show on one of the 4 major networks. For sure everything has picked up recently but they've been at this for decades, what we're seeing now is the result of all the groundwork they've laid.
It’s a long listen but worth checking out How Conservatism Won by Robert Evans. He lays out in a clear concise way “how a consortium of rich failsons got together to fund a network of right wing think tanks and shift American culture in a fun new direction. (note: it was not actually fun at all).” They’ve been very successful and those think tanks are now pipelines used to funnel ideological purists into powerful positions like our current Supreme Court.
I tell people as often as I can, especially my trans and bipoc friends; now is the time. Get a couple guns (a long one and a short one) and learn how to use them. Learn some basic first aid, you really just need to know how to stabilize someone. Start networking with like-minded people in your communities. The police will not protect us, they’ve proven they’ll happily club senior citizens to the ground and shoot any protesters in the face with rubber bullets while escorting a rightwing murderer to safety.
Iran was a secular, liberal state until almost 1980 when they (mostly legitimately) elected an Islamist theocracy; it could happen here.
edit: tl;dr the shadowy cabals the rightwing says are behind everything is classic projection again, they're controlled by shadowy cabals of rich people
edit edit: it's worth remembering that one of the primary ghouls/traitors responsible for the attempted overthrow of our government on J6 was Roger Stone, the same traitorous ratfucker who began his career working for Nixon and has a fucking Nixon tattoo on his back. It's really impossible to overstate just how fuckin' bad these people are and they're winning.