It recently struck me like a thunderbolt is the reason that I feel so alienated by both liberal and Leftist discourse is that it's sibling rivalry between two different flavours of middle-class ideology

(Ideology defined as "a kernel of truth wrapped up in comforting lies") 1/

https://twitter.com/sunflowertaters/status/1782571115816120645

I mean, on one hand the liberals sincerely want Better Things but they want this to happen while retaining capitalist property and wage-labour structures. Meanwhile middle-class Lefties don't want better things to happen under capitalism because it delays the RRRRRRRRevolution 2/

It seems that a lot of the Left don't see a difference between direct imperialist intervention and backing for an independent ally. You can't tell these people that there aren't NATO troops fighting in Donbas, nor that Joe Biden isn't personally bombing Rafah... 1/ If you don't understand that both Netanyahu and Zelenskyy are independent beings with their own interests and strategies (deeply, deeply wicked ones in Bibi's case), you end up in a Green Lantern theory where everything that happens, happens at the sufference of the White House

In accelerating globalised capitalism, BEING NORMAL IS A PRIVILEGE.

The modern form of the reactionary culture war aims at recruiting threatened NORMALITY. This is how eating meat, driving cars, and being cis have become frontlines, cutting across race, class and gender. 1/ In Aotearoa this includes "pronouncing te reo words incorrectly". It's also why COVID restrictions became intolerable - because people wanted to GO BACK TO NORMAL. You can try to explain that "normal" is unsustainable or unfair. Fuck that. We were used to it and we'll die there.

It's weird to read this stuff as a NZer, when the rest of my feed is actual NZers saying "what a hopeless backwards country, can't wait to emigrate somewhere with decent wages, housing and infrastructure".

Also, we have our own violent fascists who want to overthrow democracy

https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1649752169896181762

Okay, be fair: no-one but the fascists and the fat cats would want to emulate the US.

I suppose what I'm really worried about is a whole bunch of US liberals moving here and combining their unexamined US-centrism with a patronizing, romantic view of other countries

I am begging everyone to understand what it means that Putin's latest speech denigrates the West BOTH using homophobia, racism and "anti-wokery" AND using "anti-imperialist" slogans. They've been patiently trying to fuse the Western socialist Left and far Right for decades. 1/ I dread becoming one of those horrible people who talk about "why I left the Left". But I really am grieving the loss of my political community of 20 years. It seems these days that any public figure with a socialist or even social-democratic critique of capitalism... 2/

Why is it that Left-wing academics keep falling for Right-populism or even fascism? Because the people who called Brexit or Trumpism "a confused working-class uprising", or who today deny Russian/Chinese war crimes or COVID vaccines, have a simple, binary, populist analysis. 1/ The way they see it, there are two sides and only two sides. The Elite of Bad Guys - adjectives such as neoliberal, neoconservative, imperialist, Establishment. And their opponents, who are by default "the Left", the Good Guys. 2/

I lost friends on the local Left when I reacted badly to them doing this same thing for Tulsi Gabbard. It is EXTREMELY easy for Fascists to use Left-sounding language and "own the libs", and it is a REAL danger when Leftists take that shit at face value. 1/

https://twitter.com/MusketAnna/status/1574747633326952455

Two Spideys again on this issue. Libs are aiding fascism by saying "Meloni doesn't REALLY mean all that Viva Il Duce still, it'll all be fine." Leftists by saying "wow, she calls out (((financial speculators))), she sounds like a comrade, maybe we should be like her"

I know a lot of you fuckin' hate Trots, and with good reason, but the Trot tradition has two political heuristics which I still find massively useful: 1) "military but not political support"; 2) the United Front vs. the popular front and sectarianism. Let me break those down: 1/ "Military but not political support" means: "I want X team to win the war but that in no way means that I support X government or refuse to back X workers/oppressed against their own government". The classic example of this is of course Churchill and Stalin, WW2. 2/

A respected Aotearoa activist just retweeted this from the "ProgInternational" guy who is bloodthirsty about how Ukrainian Nazis deserve to die (but wants to decolonise Western Sahara). I am going to assume she just doesn't know, but I am so tired... 1/

https://twitter.com/daphlawless/status/1570502839746842626

... just like the other NZ activist who approvingly retweeted Tulsi Gabbard's dunks on centrist Dems, and yelled at me for pointing out that Gabbard was fash. I was the bad person for expecting someone to know "the ins and outs of American politics." 2/

ITT I put my finger on what's been bothering me for a while: you know those MAGA/"freedom movement"/fash cookers, who've talked themselves into inhuman nonsense because they live in an informational echo chamber? A milder form of that disease plagues the activist Left. 1/

https://twitter.com/daphlawless/status/1570502821832962048

This is always what happens when your culture prioritises "social proof" (is the person making this claim "one of us", preferably one of us with clout?) and group cohesion over reaching out into the Real World of Human Suffering and Horrible Jobs. 2/

Those views - campism, i.e. making anti-Westernism the basis of foreign politics, denying war crimes by non-Western governments, smearing people's uprisings in those countries as CIA or Nazis - are absolutely hegemonic on the *activist* Left here. Let's specify what that means 1/

https://twitter.com/unnamedleftist/status/1570488379367890945

It means the Left (socialist or social democratic) who get their opinions and information from "dissident" sources - inc. state media of foreign countries - and reject the Western MSM on principle. Unfortunately this has led to a similar media bubble to the anti-vaxxers. 2/