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Who's moaning? If people hear the word "socialism" and instead of reading a book or you know, talking to a socialist, they get their definition from Fox News that's their business. What I'm objecting to is the notion that it's a branding problem. The meaning of these words is not hidden, every liberation movement I've ever encountered has been welcoming and joyful and happy to explain itself in it's own terms just fine. The "branding" is well established and out there for anybody to engage with even accidentally. It's fine to call out the bad actors misselling liberation movements, parties, tendencies etc as hate groups, and be bemused as I am that our response to it puts the onus back on the groups themselves "must try harder" with the "branding".
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Sep 30, 2023 12:21
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Mega Comrade posted:You can moan that 66% of women are willfully ignorant until you are blue in the face. It's not going to fix things. I've been thinking a lot about the book burnings in the US and how it fits together with these culture war things. They get to burn the books which to their base is an obviously good thing to do. To everyone else they're clearly Nazis but the thing is they're not actual real Nazis. It's baiting the accusation that they're just like the Nazis to which they have the canned responses that they're not actually Nazis and you call anyone you disagree with a Nazi. In that they've changed the debate from burning books to how the left call everyone they don't like Nazis. They never actually have to talk about what they're doing, just the reaction to what they're doing. This really taps into the brain of folk who want to be seen as reasonable people. You see feminist described and hysterical, screeching feminists you never talk about what's happening, just the reaction to it. Tate does this as well, saying controversial things then attacks the reaction, never defending his core point. This is a difficult place for people used to having debates thinking they need to defend thier views. As soon as you're defending your views you're on the back foot against someone who has no interest in doing that.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:22
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Isomermaid posted:It's fine to call out the bad actors misselling liberation movements, parties, tendencies etc as hate groups, and be bemused as I am that our response to it puts the onus back on the groups themselves "must try harder" with the "branding". This is a really reasonable stand to take. Assuming you don't want to get into power.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:24
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Aramoro posted:As soon as you're defending your views you're on the back foot against someone who has no interest in doing that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA
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Sep 30, 2023 12:26
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I guess we should all vote starmer and be happy then.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:26
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Am in trafalgar square and there's an unironic "dogs lives matter" placard
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Sep 30, 2023 12:28
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Ah, a bully pulpit.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:28
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Guavanaut posted:Ah, a bully pulpit. Noice
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Sep 30, 2023 12:33
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OwlFancier posted:I guess we should all vote starmer and be happy then. It's would say you should vote how you feel but hope that he does win the next election. I don't think PM Braverman would be better.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:35
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Aramoro posted:This is a really reasonable stand to take. Assuming you don't want to get into power. 'I don't want to be in power I want to be right' is a strong undercurrent in certain sections of British discourse. See: We won the argument
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Sep 30, 2023 12:36
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Isomermaid posted:Who's moaning? If people hear the word "socialism" and instead of reading a book or you know, talking to a socialist, they get their definition from Fox News that's their business. I'm not trying to argue having to rebrand is a good thing. Its dumb and stupid. But I don't see what the alternative is when what we are currently doing isn't working. Meanwhile we spend so much energy trying to push down fascism for it to just rebrand every decade or two and pop right back up. If you have an alternative I'd love to hear it. Aramoro posted:I've been thinking a lot about the book burnings in the US and how it fits together with these culture war things. Yeah I feel this way to. Every time the right do something outlandish it becomes a debate about the left being ridiculous with its accusations. They find the silliest most internet poisoned left take on twitter and pin it up as a 'see what the woke mob think of you' Its an incredibly clever trick that they have gotten very good at.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:42
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Aramoro posted:It's would say you should vote how you feel but hope that he does win the next election. I don't think PM Braverman would be better. I, and I presume you, will be entirely out of power either way. The country will continue on the same course, whether we see a braverman running it next year or in five or ten years. But it will be fine because "we" met them half way.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:42
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https://twitter.com/AdamToms3/status/1707759973218898248
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Sep 30, 2023 12:43
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I mean... I know that seems like a gotcha but if the political battlefield is so toxic that winning under those terms means selling out all your principles to fight in a way dictated to you by the enemy which compromise you further then I'd say that the answer is to put your energy into changing the nature of the battlefield. Power in a cruel and hosed up system is a weird thing to want.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:44
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It blows my mind that people can see we’re losing swathes of young men to the alt-right and have no response from the left other than ‘loving idiots should listen to us and if they don’t that’s their problem.’ Like do you know what politics is lmao E: yes and I’m sure if you refuse to change your strategy at all or try to understand why young men go that way the battlefield will change any day now
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Sep 30, 2023 12:45
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Mega Comrade posted:Its an incredibly clever trick that they have gotten very good at.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:45
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Guavanaut posted:Ah, a bully pulpit XL
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Sep 30, 2023 12:47
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And it makes me extremely annoyed when people I had thought better of turn into "loony lefties always seeking ideological purity instead of being sensible like me" when it reaches a subject they don't personally have an investment in. People fight for things that they think are important, they demand the results they need. Just because you may be comfortable giving ground to the andrew tates of the world does not mean other people are going to want to follow you.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:47
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'We will not give them an inch' is not a sound strategy when your opponents are already taking ground.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:52
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I mean personally I don't share my political proposals any more based on legal advice but I feel there are some excellent and rather permanent solutions available for forward thinking folks with a enthusiastic nature
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Sep 30, 2023 12:53
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Well you and the tate fans can get together and agree a sensible quota of permissible misogyny and see where that gets you.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:55
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No one’s talking about giving any ground, that’s not what anybody has at any point argued for mate. I don’t agree that this was the case with Corbyn as you know (actually being more pure but fighting more fiercely would’ve been the key), but in this case I can’t see how else you’d describe it? ‘Our current tactics aren’t working, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to treat young men like people who have reasons for the things they do. They should just be better feminism understanders like me’ IS purity politics is it not? I know words like pragmatism have unfortunately become associated with Starmer but it’s not actually a bad thing and we shouldn’t let his ilk take the word from us. To win in politics you have to be understanding of people you don’t like or agree with, and find ways to bring them round. Stating your position and giving up when that doesn’t work is a losing strategy and if you hold onto it because you don’t want to ‘compromise your principles’ or whatever then I’m sorry but that’s self-indulgent nonsense. I also resent the implication that as someone with a 12 year old sister and many women I love in my life, I don’t actually care about this stuff. It’s because I care that I try to look past my base emotions about young people on the Tate train to find a strategy and way of interacting in my life that might actually do some good.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:55
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It's not even idiollogical purity. I don't think you have to change what socialism or feminism is. The ideas from both are popular when you ask people. It's just the names that are tainted. Maybe we can fix those perceptions. But people have been trying to do it for 30 years or more with limited success. OwlFancier posted:Well you and the tate fans can get together and agree a sensible quota of permissible misogyny and see where that gets you. Ok now you are arguing in bad faith
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Sep 30, 2023 12:55
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OwlFancier posted:I, and I presume you, will be entirely out of power either way. The country will continue on the same course, whether we see a braverman running it next year or in five or ten years. But it will be fine because "we" met them half way. The country is going to trundle on regardless, so what we need is the least bad options. The next prime minister will be the leader of the Tories or Labour Party. It's not going to be fine but maybe it can be less bad? I get the option of voting SNP here as well but there's no revolutionary platform to vote for really. What I don't know is how we affect actual change. How can the course of the country be changed without magical thinking of things like 'The press stop being bad'
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Sep 30, 2023 12:56
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My gran has a similar issue where she has no strong political opinions on pretty much anything other than hating all politicians. If we try to engage her on these topics she just says “hmm, well, I don’t know” and shuts down. She votes Tory because that’s what her mum told her to do almost 70 years ago. It’s almost certainly the case that her mum said that because her parents were die-hard Protestants and Labour was the “Catholic” party in the 50s, even though my gran hasn’t been to church on a Sunday since she married my hardcore atheist grandad. My grandad who was a labour voter and trade union member his whole adult life couldn’t change her mind. My dad who’s been a Scottish nationalist and trade union member his whole adult life couldn’t change her mind. Nope, her mum said vote Conservative and that’s what she’s going to do.
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Sep 30, 2023 12:56
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OwlFancier posted:Well you and the tate fans can get together and agree a sensible quota of permissible misogyny and see where that gets you. They will, the 66% of women who don't identify as feminists will go off and come up with a compromise that will shape society and you will be worse off for it. Worse off than if you had been involved in the discussion but hey at least you can tell yourself you didn't abandon your principles right?
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Sep 30, 2023 12:58
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An incredible letter…
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Sep 30, 2023 13:01
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Aramoro posted:The country is going to trundle on regardless, so what we need is the least bad options. The next prime minister will be the leader of the Tories or Labour Party. It's not going to be fine but maybe it can be less bad? I get the option of voting SNP here as well but there's no revolutionary platform to vote for really. You don't. You exist in a society where you do not have political power. Where what is necessary and what is done are separated by a vast gulf. The only choice you personally have is how you conduct yourself. You can either transform yourself into a pandering cringing weakling, devoid of principles, willing to reshape yourself to fit in with any popular crowd, or you can stand for what you believe in. In neither case will you have power, but only in one will you be used.
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Sep 30, 2023 13:02
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Lurker here, just trying to unpack this "tax burden is the highest its been in 70 years" meme that tories seem to be bleating on about at the minute. It sounds & smells like bullshit, last time I checked corporation tax is still lower than it was in the early 2000s, basic rate is the lowest its ever been, etc. But I want to check whether I've got this right - when they say "tax burden" they mean total tax receipts divided by GDP, and the actual reason why this would be at its "highest in 70 years" is because of anaemic GDP (low levels of consumer/government spending & business investment), rather than the tax rates being "too high"? So are they just saying this as exuse to cut (higher rates of) taxes, in the same way they used "debt/gdp too high" as an excuse to cut spending - i.e. another case of focusing on the numerator rather than the denominator?
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Sep 30, 2023 13:05
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"how to win people over" is not a question with an easy answer, especially in the face of a dominant media and economic class constantly pushing the exact opposite of what this thread advocates for We saw clear as day just how much something as mildly radical as Corbyn was eviscerated I get why in the face of that, any compromise feels like betrayal. I think though that there's a difference between compromising with people to try and meet them halfway, and compromising with those in power, which always feels like it's asking to get tricked
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Sep 30, 2023 13:09
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Gene Ricman posted:So are they just saying this as exuse to cut (higher rates of) taxes, in the same way they used "debt/gdp too high" as an excuse to cut spending - i.e. another case of focusing on the numerator rather than the denominator? I'm sure few will weep for the speculators and landlords here, but I'm wondering what the Tories' aim is with that, consolidating housing under larger land monopolists?
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Sep 30, 2023 13:11
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I'm not really sure slapping a new name on socialism or feminism is 'trying something new'. It actually seems like a pretty cheap trick that's actually fairly insulting and only demonstrates you've lost the argument. i.e my ideas are so poo poo I actually have to con people (who it can be inferred I consider rubes). Only having dishonesty left up your sleeve is a bad look! And as we live in the era of 'woke HS2', even if you did come up with something new it'd just get called pinko commie woke bullshit anyway, so why degrade yourself.
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Sep 30, 2023 13:15
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Kind of lost track whos arguing what against who so I'm just going to tag onto a post I agree with and hope I don't spin it off into somewhere you didn't want it to goOwlFancier posted:You don't. It's interesting, in a lot of spheres I'm in, I'm seeing a lot of this attitude of "nobody is coming to save us, get together with like minded people and build the structures you want that will help people, regardless of what the state/popular discourse etc is doing". Mutual aid groups, outreach stuff like I think TWT are going into this year, social things, all kinds. And I get that to some people stepping back from the argument, whatever it is, that must be won at all costs so everyone agrees with us raar raar seems kind of defeatist or a retreat into a position of ideological purity, I really do. The last couple of years have been pretty poo poo for me and I've only started to get a better handle on it as I've changed how I interact with these arguments. Like, I *could* be wringing my hands about the loving STATE of the Labour party, or trying to work out how to engage with the GC crowd on trans issues and fight my battles there OR I could get involved with local things and go to a place where I work positively with other LGBT people and be part of the liberation side of it. If people want to see refusing to take the fight on the terms set by the enemy as a stance from ideological purity or capitulation or whatever I can't stop them I'm just trying to say that there are other ways to fight and there are other ways to engage and some of them help in ways that trying to find a way to package ourselves to be persuasive to people that are hostile to us never could.
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Sep 30, 2023 13:19
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Lets not automatically assume that Labour are "the less bad" option here either. Even the most die hard Starmer supporters are openly saying that all the stuff his party is saying is actually just a ruse to get into power. Its just a lovely delusion to accept because the alternative is the reality that they believe everything they're saying.
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Sep 30, 2023 13:20
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smellmycheese posted:An incredible letter… Lol it's like when my wife was getting a new front door, literally told them we could spend no more than £1000, their quote was an extremely generous 995
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Sep 30, 2023 13:21
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JoylessJester posted:I'm not really sure slapping a new name on socialism or feminism is 'trying something new'. It actually seems like a pretty cheap trick that's actually fairly insulting and only demonstrates you've lost the argument. i.e my ideas are so poo poo I actually have to con people (who it can be inferred I consider rubes). I don't really understand this take. People like Tate, Peterson et al. are making an absolute killing and attracting sizable followings through deception and dishonesty. What does it matter if they have 'lost the argument'? Their ideas are poo poo, they are conning people, they are trading on lies...and? How can these people who are demonstrably doing the things you claim are just insulting and show they have lost the argument be carving swathes out of the young population? I guess the question is do you consider self-degradation to be a more important goal than societal change? Because the answer to 'Why degrade yourself?' is that by taking a different approach you have the potential to change the lives of young people for the better.
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Sep 30, 2023 13:22
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Isomermaid posted:The talk of branding problems for feminism, socialism, whatever is wild to me. Ok if people approach subjects they don't know anything about from personal experience or going straight to the literature that's one thing but deciding you hate a thing because the person you choose to take your definitions from is one of the most dishonest and disgusting critics of it like Tate is a whole other thing. I think I agree that a core issue is self-centeredness. I think a lot of the OG feminist stuff is kind of not relevant anymore, like the idea that women are inherently a bit stupid and incapable so there's no point educating them. These days in a reasonably sized class it's likely there will be a girl performing better than you if you're a boy and plenty of women in power so experientially not so much this kind of issue. Ive never watched him so tell me if I'm wrong but my mental image of the tate lifestyle is banging supermodels on a yacht sipping cristal by way of alpha grindset. it doesn't help that that kind of thing seems like it would not be an uncommon vision of success in our consumer-capitalist society but it really appeals to self-centeredness, "I should get all the stuff and other people exist to please me" what Martin Buber terms as an "I-It relationship" and for a horny teenage boy relating that way to women it's naturally going to manifest in sexism and mysogyny. if that's me and I end up unable to move out of my parents house and can't get laid let alone a model, either the finger goes out and blames women and I become a miserable incel or the finger points in, "I'm a failure", now my self-esteem is in the toilet and I want to kill myself. A tough place to be and a tough place to get out of. Maybe I get out of it by reading feminist lit or maybe I become a born again Christian and start relating to everyone as fellow children of God, in any case what needs to happen is for me to start relating to people as human beings rather than objects for my pleasure, probably no substitute for good parenting to begin with in this regard. I feel like I gone on somewhat of a tangent but really I think it might be good not to bother with labels or brands at all in a lot of cases and just address individual core issues in a way and language that will actually hit the target without compromising, especially if you can show people why this way you end up miserable or an rear end in a top hat and can offer an alternative where maybe you aren't guaranteed a yacht (you weren't in the other either) but you'll probably be happier either way.
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Sep 30, 2023 13:24
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Isomermaid posted:Kind of lost track whos arguing what against who so I'm just going to tag onto a post I agree with and hope I don't spin it off into somewhere you didn't want it to go Or to put it another way, if 1 in 6 boys are into andrew tate, why fight desperately to get those 1 in 6 back instead of looking to the other 5. Rugz posted:I don't really understand this take. People like Tate, Peterson et al. are making an absolute killing and attracting sizable followings through deception and dishonesty. What does it matter if they have 'lost the argument'? Their ideas are poo poo, they are conning people, they are trading on lies...and? How can these people who are demonstrably doing the things you claim are just insulting and show they have lost the argument be carving swathes out of the young population? Perhaps it is possible to make a lot of money trading on lies and using up other people like objects, but it is not possible to achieve a desirable political change by doing the same thing, because the change you want is for people to stop doing that. Has it ever in your life occured to you that the means and the end are not entirely interchangeable? MLM schemes exist on a tide of human misery, but they keep succeeding because that can be suppressed via the mechanism of media, you only show the tiny fraction of people doing well, you put it in glossy pictures and set it to upbeat music, you sell it on social media, and the great mass of people with bedrooms full of worthless crap and desperately in debt simply aren't seen. It is possible to run grifts which abuse and degrade their participants and still get more people signing on up until the media narrative turns and it becomes fashionable to sell the story of the people used up by it. And the problem, there, is with the social structures that facilitate that. The idea that you personally can stop it, that your participation will make a jot of difference is exceedingly vain. You can no more stop that than you can try to catch an avalanche. It is a vast engine turning real life into stories with obscene amounts of money working to make the lie look appealing. You can not do that better than the system which does not have to care about the human cost. You don't have the money or the reach to do it, and that success only comes by abusing others, which is why it loves abusive people like tate. It is not compatible with a worthwhile political platform, which is why the political platforms that succeed are also ones that sell out their adherents, just like the tories do, just like starmer is doing. And when he does all his supporters are going to have to find some way to rationalise why they didn't get what they want. Some of them are going to get burned out and disengage, some of them are going to reshape themselves so that what they got is actually what they wanted, and become worse people for it. But nowhere in there is there room for an honest hope for improvement. If there is any alternative, it is in rejecting the method wholesale, giving people an alternative way to exist, outside of media and bullshit and lies. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Sep 30, 2023 |
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Sep 30, 2023 13:26
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Gene Ricman posted:Lurker here, just trying to unpack this "tax burden is the highest its been in 70 years" meme that tories seem to be bleating on about at the minute. It sounds & smells like bullshit, last time I checked corporation tax is still lower than it was in the early 2000s, basic rate is the lowest its ever been, etc. Tax thresholds have also been staying more static than incomes - meaning more and more of incomes are being taxed even as the rates remain the same.
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Sep 30, 2023 13:30
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Rugz posted:I don't really understand this take. People like Tate, Peterson et al. are making an absolute killing and attracting sizable followings through deception and dishonesty. What does it matter if they have 'lost the argument'? Their ideas are poo poo, they are conning people, they are trading on lies...and? How can these people who are demonstrably doing the things you claim are just insulting and show they have lost the argument be carving swathes out of the young population? Hey man, if you wanna hit the streets for 'manly man new way 2.0' that's secretly fem-soc or whatever go for it. The structures in place allow for right wingers to grift, I'm fairly certain any lefty doing it will be rounded on as a liar and hypocrite by the same structures pretty much instantly. But hey maybe not I might be wrong and you could be the millionaire woke Andrew Tate that saves us.
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Sep 30, 2023 13:31
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