I keep hearing people say that the far-left is significantly less organised, more fragmented than the far-right. Why is that? (And to be clear: I’m asking about the far-left, not just the left in general (though they may be linked)
Far left has a lot of good ideas and how to go about them is debated, often loudly and messily.
Far right has stupid people, which are happy to go confidently along.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell
It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves. - Franz Kafka
Obligatory:
Because, contrary to what they say, a lot of leftists are intolerant of opinions that differ from their own. A lot of them have a black-white mentality, where either you are 100% with them or otherwise you are against them and might as well be Hitler incarnate. They live in extreme bubbles which just enforces this behaviour. You can see this very well in some subreddits and also here on Lemmy, since Lemmy is very left leaning.
In german we have this saying:
“Treffen sich 2 Linke, bilden sich drei Splittergruppen”
“Two leftists meet, 3 splintergroups are formed”.
Two leftists meet in the forest. Both die.
One reason is that people on the left are more inclined to disagree with each other, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and accepted as part of the political process. You figure things out by voicing differing opinions and reaching some kind of middle ground. There’s room for disagreement on the left.
People on the right (fascists in America) are more likely to do what they are told by their “superiors” and fall in line. Differing opinions, or lifestyles, are not readily tolerated and you will be excommunicated if you push the accepted boundaries too much.
You can say a lot of negative things about fascism, and you should, but fascists tend to have a lot of solidarity as long as they toe the line. That is, until the critical breaking point, which is usually everyone that isn’t a fascist realizing they actually have to deal with the fascist threat, at which point the fascists start collapsing because you have to be stupid to be fascist so fascism can’t really stand up against a united front against it.
Basically the “no-true Scotsman” fallacy. It was kind of the same way with libertarians. Some people would unironically argue that if you weren’t in support of allowing someone to own a nuclear warhead recreationally then you “weren’t a REAL libertarian” and should stfu. Then libertarians tried running for president and got like .9% of the vote.
It doesn’t help that the right infiltrates and murders left wing movements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_Wars
I’m not a historian so I’m struggling to remember specific details. “People’s History of the United States” by Zinn includes many examples that went like “People wanted to organize for something better” -> “Capitalists said no, and had the police beat up and arrest people”
Real-world problems are complex. Every solution to one problem affects other systems in unpredictable ways. When a large group of people agree on a solution, it is usually because it is simplistic and wrong.
Classic example: prices are high. The left blames actual scarcity, corporate greed, climate change, institutional problems. Any solution that might address high prices will be complex and will have side effects. This will cause people to disagree.
On the right, some jerkwad like Trump says “prices are high because of immigration - specifically, the immigration of brown people.” The solution is ICE! Simple, easy to understand, dead wrong. Everyone on the right cheers!!!
In other words: people hear what they want to, an easy scapegoat answer.
Yeah. It has happened over and over. For Hitler, it was the Jews: they cost Germany the war, they are the root of all social problems, etc. It is almost always some minority like immigrants or trans people. Scapegoats unify, complexity divides.
That’s an interesting point. I’ll definitely be more wary of scapegoat answers now.
Right-wing people embrace hierarchy. Left-wing people don’t.
Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.
Mostly agent provocateurs.
I think the far-left has more diversity in its political positions and its factions usually don’t get along with each other simply because their projects are incompatible. That may cause a little bit of “disorganization” but I don’t think that’s bad per se. It could be seen as a sign of critical thinking.
its factions usually don’t get along with each other simply because their projects are incompatible
What do you mean by that? Can you give me an example?
For example, marxist-leninists have a very different approach to the anti-capitalist fight compared to most anarchists. Another similar example would be platformists anarchists and communizers (communization theory): generally, both are communists; however, platformists stress the importance of a mass organization that would engage with dual power structures, while communizers don’t.
Mit study said otherwise
Because they’re legitimately crazy. The far right is obviously insane as well, but in a different way.
The far left has a snowflake mentality, every individual person has to be special in some way. This causes a same general “side” but because of them all being “special” in some way, it’s limited.
The far right has the mentality of they’re all cheering for the exact same football team. They’re a mass of identical people at a football game all cheering together. It’s typically called a tribe mentality. Because of those they have a singular goal and not a “I’m special” mentality.
That’s why the ar right person asks you who you voted for and you say Kamala they have a temper tantrum. They are so into a person they’ve never met, never will meet or know nothing about them personally, but to them it’s like their team going to the super bowl intensity. So they assume you must have the exact same intensity for who you voted for. When in reality, I think Kamala was dog shit too, but I’m not voting Trump.
This veers dangerously close to the horseshoe analogy…
The whole principle of right wing thought is strict vertical hierarchies. For their moral flaws, strict vertical hierarchies are a pretty efficient way to organize the average person. The whole principle of left wing thought is flattened, distributed hierarchies. For their moral virtues, decentralized flat hierarchies are pretty slow to organize. It’s a lot simpler to fall in behind an authority figure than participate in never ending sub-sub-subcommittees.
It’s hard to unify around a course of action when your whole thing is incorporating diverse perspectives and rejecting centralization. I’m not saying it’s not the right thing to do, it is, but it presents inherent challenges.
In other words, taking differing opinions into account and building things is hard. Deferring to what a “superior” is telling you is easy.
In short, yes
Because we are trying to make sense, not just to be convincing.
On the process divergences may appear.
The far-left and far-right are compromised of different groups with some common goals and some specific, often incompatible goals.
On the right the common goal is the more important one and groups are able to compromise on their specific goals in order to move the entire right wing agenda forward. Conservative brain is very good at accepting higher power type justifications and are able to sacrifice their own interests in the name of the leader/group.
On the left the group specific goals are based on identity and people can’t compromise on them. The common goals become secondary issues that can be sacrificed and the groups specific goals are the main objective. Anyone proposing a compromise is seen as a traitor to their identity and their group.
The far right only have to organise around a handful of simplistic ideas. They talk in tabloid headlines. Smear shit and hope the millionaire fash send money your way. It’s as easy as flipping hamburgers.
The left have to deal with the complexities of reality. They need to talk with stakeholders and learn from specialists in a given subject at a given time. They are limited by language that can express the complexity of our societies and what makes them run well.
I’m not saying that’s the full explanation, but it’s inherently harder to organise something more complex and creative. It’s easier to organise a dirty protest.
I was at a Moral Mondays protest in Raleigh NC a while back and someone with a bullhorn called out “What do we want?!”
And the crowd yelled back, all at once:
“Racial justice!”
“Marriage equality!”
“Immigration reform!”
“Police reform!”
“Impeach Trump!”
“Close Guantanamo!”
“Better pay for teachers!”
…and a bunch of other demands too many to understand in a crowd that large, and while I knew I was with the right people, I had a sinking feeling about our chances of achieving much of anything.
That sounds like an exceptionally unplanned rally, or the wrong person had the bullhorn. But we have to start somewhere so well done all.
The far right is funded by deep pockets and is not attacked by the establishment Republicans.
If the Democratic Party establishment would see the left as an asset rather than a threat then things might change.
Well, that’s the thing about the Democratic Party. They actually aren’t left of center. They are performatively left on a few social issues when it’s convenient.
The Democratic Party is at left as it can be without touching underlying capitalist structure, which is to say, it is not properly left at all.
I agree with this, and it’s why movements like OWS and BLM have more or less done nothing. Those are complex concepts with lists of things that need to be done. The right has “Lower taxes” and “Let us be racist”. The left though has nuanced concepts and new things that people have never heard of. People hear “Lower taxes” and know what that means. Universal healthcare is new and complex, and so the right reduces it to something they understand, “higher taxes” and other fearmongering. Meanwhile we’re trying to show amortization rates of providing care to everyone and the right has simple phrases.
Rinse and repeat for everything. We tried “Defund police” but the right only heard “No more police” because there is a lot of nuance to “defund police”, like demilitarizing and focusing on sending in people who can actually help. “Climate change” is a complex nuanced subject that takes a long time to understand, but the right reduces it to “They want to take away your truck”.
Gay marriage I think worked because it was a very simple message, allow gays to marry. They tried to reduce it however they could but in that case their arguments were the harder ones to follow. I think we need to think about how we describe things, and try to avoid from the beginning needing to explain concept subjects to (I’m sorry but) simple people. Universal healthcare should simply mean “We run a government level insurance program, like all of the other countries, so no one gets denied coverage”. Or something like that.
“No more police” is a pretty simple idea that seems to have slipped by you so idk
I had a hysterical family member reading the DSA and saying “they want to abolish the police and prisons, that’s crazy to just let all those people walk the streets.”
I attempted to clarify that the prison industrial complex is so corrupt and broken it needs to be completely replaced and their reply was, “well the website doesn’t say that so what am I supposed to believe?”
“No more police” is an idealistic concept that would never make it out of committee and is routinely used by the right to “prove” to themselves that we can’t be taken seriously. “Demilitarized police” instead is a concept that could be actually implemented, and could get support from both the people and politicians and could actually be implemented.
If you seriously believe that we could pivot next year to “no more police” then you’re deluding yourself, there’s no politician in this entire country who would stake their career on that. Nice to dream, but no way in reality it would ever happen, and using it only fuels the right.
I’m not looking for a politician to take anything seriously. I am looking for we the people to remake this godforsaken place, and that means implementing our goals directly, which includes dismantling every police station and sheriff’s office.
Seriously the police are kidnapping people at random and you still don’t get that the system is broken?
I’m not so unreasonable to assume that no one who is currently wearing a badge and gun can rehabilitate themselves into productive members of society, but the systems that they work as a part of need shut the fuck down.
ICE is not the police, and I can’t believe I have to state that.
ICE is a natural evolution of the way American police have operated for decades now. It’s wild that people don’t see that. They didn’t just appear from nowhere.
Are they worse than police? Arguably yes, but they didn’t just appear spontaneously from nowhere. Our failure to reign in the police and force them to obey the law led directly to the behavior we now see from ICE. We’ve let the white supremacists run wild and refine their techniques for a long time now.
The fraternal order of police supports ICE.
It depends on the place, many cities and states have rules that prevent local police from helping ICE. I’m not saying that police don’t need reform because I think that’s what the whole ‘defund the police’ movement is really about, but to say that all police support ICE is inaccurate - otherwise sanctuary cities simply wouldn’t be allowed to exist. Now, there aren’t nearly as many sanctuary cities as I’d like - and more states would do well to follow the example of states like Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, etc.
That’s another topic entirely, though.
Is this the “left infighting” that i hear about
As others mentioned, ICE are not police.
On top of that again it’s idealism vs realism. Yes idealism is what it could be, but the system isn’t changing anytime soon. I’m sorry, but it’s not. Unless the majority of people suddenly mobilize, but I’ve been waiting now 30 years and at multiple points thought maybe they finally would, but it’s not happening. Once you realize that it’s idealism, then you can move into realistic options.
I’m not looking for a politician to take anything seriously. I am looking for we the people to remake this godforsaken place,
And this is why those movements fail.
This is the reason why we decide to infight instead. It’s so much less effort than using the mental energy it takes to hang with other visibly different or distasteful people. Better just spend the days figuring out how to deliver sick owns to people who are within our reach and not prepared because they were expecting to be fighting against Maga.
This is how pussies fight but you bet it’s easier than cooperating with anyone in a plurality
Caring about things like “facts” and “not hurting people” is a real drag.
