Thread by @sunnshiiny

So I thought I’d substantiate the claims about progressive left and the widespread delusional beliefs & twisted values many have.

https://twitter.com/sunnshiiny/status/1498834872810438659

There are radical left progressives working especially hard to criticize the moderates (read centrists, liberals and moderate socialists) and their “apparent” indifference to or support of Nazi and fascist ideology.

Even more progressive lefties fail to realize this is propaganda and disinformation generated by the far right who have infiltrated the left, or by delusional people who see the world in black and white rigidity.

The result is a lot of progressive left supporters who are egregiously misinformed and completely ignorant of nuance, complexity and paradox within the human experience.

You’re either all good or all bad.

These are the folks who believe “incorrect” worldviews and beliefs define your character forever. There is no room for personal growth.

It’s purity culture inverted within leftist ideology.

Cancel culture is a prime example. The zealous rejection of BIPOC and LGBTQ on the far right is only matched by the militant rejection of imperfect values and undesirable beliefs on the radical left.

The irony is that both sides are intolerant of tolerance.

I find it fascinating that people can be so easily pulled into extremism because they are uncomfortable or incapable of coping with complexity. Therefore the tendency to divide the world into simplistic binary options becomes their pursuit.

All good or all bad. No paradoxes!

When you’re five that’s an appropriate world view. Children often hate vegetables and live French fries and candy. There is no nuance because the world is much easier to navigate when absolutes remain consistent.

But you’d think most would outgrow that mindset by high school.

However, a significant portion of the population does not handle complexity well. They never mature beyond this state of comprehension. It does have its attractions. If everything is good or bad, then righteousness becomes avoidance & condemnation of everything considered bad.

The world and its dichotomies and complexities becomes much easier to navigate. Little critical thinking is required. Just remembering the assigned value for each issue is essential.

Vocalizing beliefs & values becomes the method of identifying your in group.

Identity becomes your belief system and the degree to which you vocalize it and make it known is the game warring political opponents in identity politics interact and project their virtue.

Otherwise known as virtue signalling.

Identity politics is demagogic populism.

Which is what modern politics has become.

Individuals who get sucked into identity politics are more concerned with their liberty to amplify and signal virtue than addressing the actual problems they protest. This is left libertarianism. The individualist anarchist.

AKA anarcho-syndicalism. marxists.org/reference/arch…

Just as toxic and destructive to democratic principles as anarcho-capitalism. The two are foils of one another. Feeding off each other’s simplifications, they attack their common enemy; those who can and do appreciate complexity.

This has been the main conflict since the concept of human existence as an independent individual (individualism) became popular in the Age of Enlightenment.

Capitalists developed far right libertarian values. Anarchists developed radical left libertarian values.

Values centred around the hedonistic egoism produced by the Bubonic Plague that killed off untold millions the European and Asian populations encountered in the 14th century.

Libertarian beliefs and values are a product of widespread social collapse. Brought on by disease.

Prior to the plague, individualism wasn’t a concept. People were part of their family, their community, their fiefdom. Everyone was connected and interdependent.

That changed when half of the population died from disease in horrific ways. A disease people did not understand.

Germ theory didn’t exist. Many thought the plague was god’s vengeance, the devil, bad spirits, bad air.

Abandonment of family, community and fiefdom (your lord/government) was often required for survival. Libertarianism is a product of the devastation the plague had on society.

If your world view is defined by your connections to others, when that collapses, your world view needs an adjustment.

You can imagine PTSD and callousness became a required adaptation for survival.

Millions were forced to abandon sick family members to survive.

Just leave the sick in their beds or where they fell to die alone and suffering and leave to prevent infection (however infection was understood by contemporary survivors).

Libertarianism is a value system that permitted people to survive mass trauma and social collapse.

So hopefully you can see why libertarianism’s appeal is currently so prevalent among those fearing extermination & social collapse. It provides a coping mechanism for those impacted most by the social issues of our era. People uncomfortable with complexity & afraid of extinction.

The last time this occurred, the Great War had killed more people than any war before. Then the Spanish Flu wiped out a hundred million more at the end of the war. Social cohesion was disrupted, collapse of the world order shifted power across the globe.

Hedonistic indulgence defined the inter war period. It was the height of libertarianism. On both left and right wing.

War and widespread death, isolation and disrupted social cohesion, collapse of the world order.

Libertarianism is a coping mechanism for global trauma.

It’s a cancer that destroys civil society, community, social cohesion and compassion. It’s permission to be self indulgent, hedonistic and anti social.

New concepts like humanism, compassion and democratic principles reshaped libertarianism (classic liberalism) into liberalism.

That’s social democracy that was created in the post WW2 world.

Was it perfect? No. Nothing ever is.

But those who had gained power and wealth due to selfish disregard for the rest of humanity immediately began plans to destroy democracy. Fascists were never defeated.

They just went dark for a few decades while they regrouped.

Radical leftists did the same. Anarcho-syndicalists, purist communists all took time to regroup and strategize as well.

Humans do a piss poor job of caring for one another when global trauma occurs. Perhaps this time we will learn to care for one another. It is our instinct to help and care for each other.

That’s interrupted by continued threat to our existence.

It’s libertarians, so terrified of extinction, who interfere with human nature and try to destroy legitimate power. They’re attempting to claim it for themselves.

Maybe if we didn’t validate radicalized extremism, treating it like a legitimate political theory instead of a maladaptive coping mechanism and helped the fearful cope with change and complexity, we could build a better world.

Because as the extremists descend into panicked, reactionary behaviour, they drag the rest of society with them.

And that’s where we are right now. Descending into a dark and unpredictable social collapse on the verge of a change in world order.

There are no guarantees how this will turn out.

The collapse of the Roman Empire resulted in the Dark Ages. Hundreds of years of power jockeying, misery, loss of technology, loss of accumulated knowledge. Ignorance, poverty, suffering.

Then again, the end of WW2 heralded a surge in human development, humanist liberalism, advances in technology, scientific knowledge, human rights, reduction of economic disparity.

Only to be cut short by the reorganized extremists who have been fighting change and complexity.

It’s about 40-50% who fear change and complexity.

With advances in knowledge and skills regarding human functioning, you’d think we could develop a method to identify and treat those with difficulty coping with change and complexity.

Or we can keep repeating the same evolve/devolve pendulum swing for another millennia or two.

Perhaps our experiment is over. I don’t want it to be. But perhaps Mother Nature has selected us for extinction.

We certainly deserve it as a species at this point.

It’s not our planet to destroy. It belongs to all life on earth, not just human beings. Maybe our mutual destruction and annihilation with nuclear weapons is in the cards? None of us know.

War is hell.

But if you want peace, you don’t attack the people working to bring peace.

That is a simple concept. Easy enough for the most fearful and terrified people on the left and right who continue to create chaos. And easy enough for the moderates to start acting like moderates.

There are requirements for moderates to use violence for defence in times of physical combat.

But you don’t win hearts and minds or help people cope with extreme fear when you call them stupid and denigrate their belief system.

Be kind, be patient, be mindful of your own emotional state of being.

I know it’s hard. There are times I want to slap Dominionists and anarchists silly.

But violence only begets more violence. Unless you make the effort to break the cycle of violence.

We all need to come together if we have any chance of defeating global authoritarianism.

It’s the architects of this movement and super wealthy we need to fight. Not each other.

The only chance we have is to work together to completely defeat those who seek to subjugate us.

The average participant of the truck convoy or the misguided counter protesters are not the enemy.

But the ones who funded, planned and orchestrated it and many other destructive attacks on democracy are. That’s who the enemy is.

Now is when critical thinking and a grounded attachment to reality are the most important assets you can have.

Learn the truth.

Live the truth.

Be the truth.

Much harder than it sounds.

Be like president Zelinsky. Brave, real, and present.

Be your own hero.

@threadreaderapp please compile