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Marie Kennedy's avatar

Yeah... a comment I made on another Substack a few months ago applies here: 'People don’t dislike the far left’s approach to thinking and talking about racism because a sleazeball like Rufo (mis-)labeled it “CRT.” They dislike it because it’s dehumanizing, paranoid, inflammatory, and cultish. They just needed a word for it.'

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Steve QJ's avatar

Wow, God, that absolutely nails it! Absolutely perfect.

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Chris Fox's avatar

I remain uncomfortable with calling anything in American politics "left," much less "far left." Far left is peasant collectives. The American political left died in 1939 with revelation of the reality of Stalin's Worker's Paradise and it has never come back.

To call someone like Ocasio-Cortez "far left" doesn't pass the laugh test.

As for the Social Justice Warriors there is nothing at all "leftist" about them; they are outrage junkies and nothing more.

We have reached the point that wanting human freaking decency and justice in governance is regarded in the same light as the killing fields (not far from where I live now).

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Marie Kennedy's avatar

Fair enough, I take back the use of "far left."

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Peaceful Dave's avatar

The trouble with broad and sweeping labels is that none seem to fit. The "left" has not been the least bit liberal for many years and calling them progressive is meaningless. Progress toward what? Opinions vary if it is to something good or bad. Is the "right" conservative? Conserve what? Opinions vary if it is to something good or bad. As I mentioned in another comment, depending upon the individual issue, some would try to assign me to a political tribe, but it would be a lie since I don't check all the boxes on any tribe's statement of ideology.

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Chris Fox's avatar

There are traditional progressive causes like wealth equality, opposition to racism, environmental preservation. But the punch has a dead rat floating in it now as progressivism has come to be identified with grievances and by people who are looking for attention to themselves more than by better lives for all.

Take feminism. Please. What started out as a movement with measurable and tangible goals like wage equality—and achieved some progress toward those goals—quickly became a movement of grievance. where progress couldn't ever be claimed or measured.

When it comes to wage equality I am an ardent feminist; when it comes to "eliminating patriarchal attitudes" I'm not interested. I will continue to advocate for metrical progress but then I don't give a damn about definitions with broad consensus as having more functional utility.

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Passion guided by reason's avatar

Your personal concept of "left" differs from the common usage in discussion today in the US. Since my writing is motivated by desire to communicate with others based on shared definitions when possible, I will continue to use the definitions with broad consensus as having more functional utility.

The association with a label like "far left" is *always without exception* going to depend on context. There is no absolute and objective framework which transcends time and place. In the Stalinist USSR it will have a different association than in contemporary US usage. If I'm discussion issues with a Stalinist, I'll keep your concept in mind; if I'm discussing things with a contemporary American, I'll use contemporary contextual word definitions.

One of the things I dislike about the "social justice warriors" you reference is how often they focus in distracting word games, rather than agreeing to some shared definitions so we can move into the core of the conceptual disagreement. I'm a bit wary of your framing for similar reasons.

I think your underlying point ("correct" word usage aside) is that the range of political approaches humans have historically adopted exceeds the contemporary American contextual understandings of "far left" to "far right", which is undisputed. Neither Genghis Khan nor Pol Pot fit within the spectrum of contemporary US politics. However, we are not discussing them much today. If we were, I would agree with you that contemporary conceptions of "far left" and "far right" are inadequate. But within contemporary usage, AOC might reasonably be seen as on the far left end of today's mainstream politics, as the terms are used today.

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