Which Side are you Actually On? The Hyper-Reactive Left in Context Part 1 of 2
A two-part analysis of the benign modern Left when contrasted to the factually dangerous Right.
NOTE: I use jargon to be precise in my language and to challenge my readers to look up terms themselves rather than me expanding the writing even further. I’ll be fully exploring my use of the term “capitalism” etc in another piece. This is with the intention and hope that we can all “level up” our language rather than me oversimplifying in this era of diseducation, disinformation, and short social media attention spans. If we are to help unify the divisions of the world, I do not think “dumbing down” is the answer. Let’s all push our boundaries, as I certainly did in writing this.
Defining Left vs Right
The importance of community and togetherness have been dramatically highlighted through the Covid-19 pandemic. As we saw in the first wave response of respecting “front line workers” and medical professionals, this highlights the “we” mentality required in a public health crisis that which is in direct opposition to the “I” exacerbated by the narcissistic Trump administration and largely explains the social divide we are witnessing.
Perhaps the “Left” is presented as more radicalized due to its long-standing activism in response to the direct assault on our environment: decades of climate denial in it’s endgame which continues to be pushed aside in pandemic precedence. Meanwhile regressive and oppressive policies on BIPOC/LGBTQ/labour rights — all classically issues of the Left — simultaneously peaking in this era of an unparalleled intersection of political issues.
At the start of the pandemic, it seemed like the causes of the Left were finally gaining traction (I describe what I mean by “finally”, in Part 2). Yet instead, we are now witnessing a backlash deflection and minimization of progressive political activism as “woke” by those wielding the power to influence public perception. If there was any “conspiracy” it would be controlling the narrative on what is actually Left.
In this two-part series I will first break down the obviously oversimplified Left/Right conventions in language as I will be using them as I lead readers further into my writing. I will then put these terms in a greater context to dissect their propagandizing of “wokeism” by the mainstream media.
Let’s begin by summarizing the battles of the contemporary progressive Left:
- Climate change, pollution, and sustainability
- Women’s rights (so yeah… Roe vs Wade…)
- Justice and awareness facing First Nations communities & decolonization
- Racism
- Workers’ rights
- Access to healthcare
- Poverty, classism, affordable housing
- Unjust incarceration and the extension of the police state
- Sexual/orientation liberation
- Gun control
- Mutual aid and direct democracy
- Drug reform (you know… psychedelics & mental health reform)
Blanket statement minimizing of the “Left” delegitimizes the multi-faceted battles and minimizes progress as a whole: from Amazon’s unions to women’s rights & civil rights — and all those listed above. For example: American Left — Wikipedia — a glimpse at a very broad topic… so it’s a little reductionist to minimize the Left as “woke” as the mainstream capitalist media (MSM) propagandize when nearly everyone has benefitted from the progress made — often through bloodshed — during the battles of social justice freedoms that we now take for granted.
Propaganda in Action
There’s a reason why Christian Smalls, tracing back to the Black Panthers tended to align with anarcho/socialist values, named or not: it’s not a coincidence when they are examining the root/overarching power dynamics that oppressed them. Question their conclusions, sure, but do not let this deflect you from what they were trying to escape from. And precisely why many of these discussions remain taboo and completely reframed by the dominant MSM as seen in the images above.
So-called Centrists have more in common with those “purple haired” outspoken Lefties that they are taught to hate by Fox News than the m/billionaires resting on generational wealth. Many are now programmed towards resentment because we can see these “targets” on the street as living breathing humans… and they might just inspire the silent majority to wake up to their own internalized oppression. When was the last time you saw a billionaire? This is propagandized divide and conquer in action. Otherwise, why carry such fierce opinions on people who impact your life in no measurable way, whatsoever?
And most of this, coming from supposed active community leaders (community tending to be the “We” of the Left, imaged above) now filling their heads with right wing pundits directly opposed to their living breathing values — those again listed above.
Do you even know what your values are? What you would actually fight for? Who you would defend when your privilege mirages your disconnect? Have you consolidated them into a workable definition? Work backwards to find out.
I’m writing to fill a gap in political literacy that I see in society today. A gap deliberately caused by Right-wing propaganda. Today many people think they have Right-wing or Centrist views while disavowing the Left — when they likely hold Left wing without knowing it, simply due to misinformation of the dominant media. So let’s clear things up, at least from my political experience, keeping in mind my deliberate use of the term “Modern Left”.
What we are seeing is a response to the incoherence of political discourse we’ve seen accelerate during the pandemic: blatant hypocrisy, and stark gaps in logic. Especially to people uninformed in the larger political landscapes and in-depth critiques by authors — not bloggers or pundits. As always, no judgement at the individual level (to my friends and colleagues) — I see this as a deliberate failure of the high school education system and numerous interwoven facets I’ll be exploring as this book/blog series advances.
What I see is a total lack of political cohesion, fragmented opinions piecemealed together by what social media algorithms silo us into, the topics we should be outraged about without exposing the fundamental structural mechanisms behind them: addressing the problem at the root.
This is the same as what I am observing in the anti-vax movements: No one has all the answers (but as I wrote in my first Covid article, 1+1=2, always: facts are facts), but some commentators have a more solid factual platform and simply know more than the rest of us, and should be approached with a respectfully inquisitive demeanor. So, when I hear “how can anyone know the truth”, I refer to my *first* essay in this post/pandemic incarnation, and the fact that we do have facts and it is these that the Right minimize, mischaracterize, or outright avoid.
In these pandemic times, the difference between “We” versus “I” has never been clearer — and this precisely explains the division of politics we are seeing exacerbated by those without a compass in the political landscape. This is the difference between seeing vaccines as something done to you, versus something you do… for others.
And thus, the slippery slope begins.
In pandemic politics, the more misinformed people get the further Right they lean, and the further Right they lean, the more misinformed they become.
Take “mandates” as an example — we have to try all the tools in the toolbox if we are to truly be a compassionate society minimizing the deaths leaving children orphaned or parents childless from preventable deaths. Were these oversteps? Let those with legal expertise in the courts decide, rather than blaming Trudeau, especially when these were largely enacted by and in the jurisdiction of Conservative politicians., and also occurring on the global pandemic response. The knee-jerk lack of legal expertise is mind-numbing. Not everything needs your algorithm-influenced opinion. It’s okay to take your time to come to a conclusion and admit you don’t have all the answers. As always here I agree with Bakunin’s “in the matters of the boots we defer to the bootmaker”.
In my view, the same people attacking the minority “woke” Left issues to such a toxic degree, without equally if not more vocally attacking the actually violent Far Right (as I’ll dissect below) would almost certainly be the same people fighting against the Civil Rights movements of the 1960’s.
What would that movement have been like, if they had access to social media at the time?
When I see images like this, I have to point out that “Leftists” are on a near daily basis calling these issues out — by critiquing at the root: state capitalist oligarchies. On the one hand, this is a textbook boiling frog scenario — while we may not acutely be posting about every twist and turn of capitalism-in-action, these issues above are symptoms — and frankly idiotic memes like these paint & perpetuate some phantom “silent Leftist” when there 100% absolutely were tweets and activists raising voices in condemnation. Talk about self-serving narrative-framing and revisionism. Do I really need to go back in history myself to prove this? As always, this boils down to bullshit neo-agitprop to “OWN” the Libs (whhhyyy always the caaaps)…
While there may be Left infighting on how to progress on the fronts listed at the start of this piece, with so much of a focus on liberation and justice (largely by-definition Left), it is both currently and historically held back by-definition by the conservative, often religious Right.
Otherwise… liberation from whom, exactly?
… Into the Wrong Team
You can see I’m just loving how activists these days are written off as “Leftists” when we are the ones helping the world. Because anything unsustainable and un-egalitarian is by definition sociopathic.
There is a difference between “Liberals” who largely function on the Right-wing spectrum (being capitalists, etc) vs the legitimate Left. This is why the actual Left criticizes both Trump and Biden — two facets of state capitalism. And this is a cause of infighting as the actual Left self-corrects & self-analyzes tactics.
Yet just because some on the Left may disagree with aspects of AOC’s policies, why do people leap into the arms of Republicans and… Marjorie Taylor Green? (No links there because that’s a rabbit hole I don’t want to go down for my own mental health.) Stick with your “team” while you critique and improve tactics. You don’t jump ship… and then end up as a guest on Fox News (you know who you are).
It’s the same whataboutism mechanism I see when people criticize benign Traditional Chinese Medicine while ignoring the real dangers of capitalist biomedicine: in this case critical of the Left meanwhile posting nothing about the far worse Right? Do I need to reference my endless links on recent US domestic terrorism and now Roe vs Wade or Buffalo and Uvalde?
I’m not saying don’t focus on the problems of the Left — again that’s how we progress — but rather that we need to keep sight of the context as there are much bigger, more immediate threats out there, and why are these being diverted from our attention to these less urgent concerns? Especially by toxic pundits like Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, or Tucker Carlson.
And while party alignments shift over time (case in point, it was Lincoln’s Republicans who were the party responsible for freeing the slaves), regardless, the battles themselves, not party alignment, are the focus.
We now have a disillusioned segment: with so many having become so accustomed to the progress and integration made on these fronts (with countless lives lost in the process), we forget exactly which team we are fighting on. LGBTQ+, BIPOC or environmentalist folks identifying as Right — propagandized to fall in line with the very same machine that fought against the privileges (*ahem* rights) we now take for granted, the same wing that oppressed the warriors who fought for the freedoms they now enjoy.
This is a direct and conscious assault from the deflection and misrepresentation of the fearmongering capitalist mainstream media.
We are Living in History
I see this all as a natural process in the historical sense of things: people seem to forget that times change. Specifically using self-identified men as an example, in the previous centuries in the West, as women were oppressed and rights restricted at every turn by men — men themselves were taught to act “manly”, to “buck up”, that emotion was a sign of weakness. And as documented by Robert Bly etc in the men’s psychology movement 1990’s, we have a rebound generation of “soft men”: the male who either rebelled against the aggressive male — or was traumatized by it, having only recently had the opportunity to explore it. And this is just modern Western — expressions of masculinity have been liquid across cultures and times.
It is only natural that we have these trends. And it is only natural that self-identified men begin redefining — essentially for the first time likely since the Renaissance (I’m clearly generalizing) — what a healthy masculinity looks like: one that retains “masculinity” while respecting women and the oppressed. And this definition changes across cultures and times and is now seeking synthesis of these facets. And that implies exploring new norms. But instead — they are brushed aside as “Leftist” demasculinized snowflakes (I’m going to avoid shit-posting anything related to Tucker’s documentary here). Rather than pioneers. As they are only just getting their collective bearings in history. Certain parts of the Middle East will inevitably experience this, in their own cultural timeline (without Western “intervention”).
Just like falling down when learning how to ride a bike, wokeism is a stage. People complained about women in “male” lead roles (especially in the action genre) a mere few decades ago, and now have since normalized to it. This is a stage in history, and while being hyper-reactionary often backfires — the key point is that this the context: Times change.
Evidence: Even the more improvised-language pronouns have been normalized in the past decade, now widely accepted as they/them — even on platforms such as LinkedIn. No “compelled speech” misinformation required — just basic human decency.
If gender and sex-positive education fucks up this current generation, it’s no different than the oppression of the previous; the point is progress — again, we are living through history, not at its end point.
But may I ask… Is wokeism killing people and planet? Can you show me the death count? Because Right-wing state capitalist ecocide, colonialism, anti-science that fills ICU’s, police brutality, unsafe access to abortions, and backwards anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric resulting in trans youth suicides sure are.
Always keep your endgame in sight: Are you contributing to measurable impact on the life-or-death issues we face today… or are you holding them back? The history books will not look kindly.
So which wing do you ride, again?
I wrap up my conclusion and further reading here in Part 2 and linked next. In the meantime, please give this as many claps as you can!
Special thanks to dan browne for the proof-reading 🖤
