Thread by @N7IRL

The fact that so many loudly self-identified leftists operate under an understanding of labor and the proletariat that mostly amounts to "worker good" doesn't give me a huge amount of faith in the future of leftist politics in this country.

There seems to be a lot of people who wish to loudly establish themselves as revolutionary but can't be bothered to have a grasp on what is multiple decades of political theory and discussion.

They think we'll just move everything left and everything will be perfect.

Combine that with a lot of people having unexamined, unchallenged social conservative views and you get a left that actively mocks sex workers, the disabled, and anyone else who can be considered degenerate or inferior...and is basically slowly shifting into a goosestep.

I don't think that this loud, obnoxious subsection of the left is actually necessarily representative of the majority, though. Social media especially tends to amplify the biggest assholes.

But when the closest we have to an actual leftist politician lets that shit slide...

It matters that the loud assholes continuously coopt victories fought for by people who've been in the struggle since well before the 2016 primary.

It matters that leftists and liberals alike worked for years for what is claimed by people wanting to credit ONE leader.

And it matters when that one leader gets credit for having remained on what is (to his credit) the right side of many issues for multiple decades shows little interest in growth on some of these other issues, or in pushing the "movement" to be better on them.

It's great that people don't see "socialist" as the bogeyman the right has made it out to be anymore, and that people are embracing ideas like the notion that EVERYONE deserves healthcare.

But will EVERYONE actually get that? Or just "workers"?

There's no magical set of political positions in which everyone embracing them is now morally and ethically perfect and everything is better.

Even M4A has the potential to leave some behind, if marginalized voices get ignored.

And watching people who seem to have convinced themselves that the candidate they support means they are now cleansed of all sin and can do and say whatever they wish to any who disagrees go in on why the disabled must sideline themselves to the needs of every single "worker"?

Assholes spewing ableist slurs secure in the notion that their support for a particular version of universal health coverage means that their actions in supporting their candidate are more important than their demonstration that they don't see the disabled as actual people.

A left that doesn't center the notion that the proletariat includes not only those who work but also those who cannot, that the point of solidarity is that NO ONE goes without their basic needs met (not that no one goes without consequence for malfeasance), is worthless.

If your opposition to capitalism isn't that the very structure forces and reinforces hierarchies and by its nature leaves an ever-growing portion of the population without, are you opposing capitalism, or just your own position within it?

I know it's a bit cliche of a reference, but did people get the point of the pigs and the farmers becoming impossible to tell apart?

It is ENTIRELY possible for the country to shift heavily leftward and still leave people behind.

There has to be an intent to not only recognize marginalization but to actively seek to remedy it as well.

That's why I cringe at the insistence that all inequality must inherently be understood as economic.

Class is inextricable from systems of oppression but it's also not the only axis along which they operate.

If you remedy economic inequality do you actually end all forms of oppression and marginalization?

Or do you just end up convincing yourself that none of what remains matters because the economic inequality was the only one with material impact?

It keeps frustrating me that the person who has somewhat famously spent decades publicly embracing democratic socialism isn't the one pushing loudest and hardest for more robust, complex discussion of this and only reinforces the simpler view.

How does someone who gets so much right, especially on areas of policy that really matter, not end up leading on this?

Especially with so many coming around to reject the right's cynicism on who we can afford to help and embrace the idea that we could always have afforded this.

I want a left that rejects conservative bullshit and nonsense utterly.

Including and especially regarding who has value in society.

And it's not reassuring to watch conversations in which the loudest voices are the ones mocking the marginalized.

At the very least, if those voices are largely trolls and other fakers, leftist voices should be the loudest in rejecting their bullshit.

There's a lot of good on the left and the left/liberal divide isn't quite the clear cut thing the people who love screeching "NEOLIBERAL" at people want to paint it as.

But some of the bullshit has me hesitant to be optimistic whoever gets the nomination can turn shit around.