Guys, at this rate I don’t think the revolution’s going to happen anytime soon.

  • reallykindasorta ( reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net ) 
    44·
    2 years ago

    The differences of opinion are still there in irl leftist spaces but it alters how it feels when you’re actively doing something. Online you only see the differences in opinion but the real leftists aren’t just arguing details online (though they do that too) they’re running food banks and organizing housing cooperatives and coming out en masse when someone is being evicted. They’re putting together food packages and sending books to inmates. They’re hiking out into the desert to leave water for migrants and waiting by the train tracks to toss food up to travelers.

    Bickering about details online might seem ridiculous to someone who isn’t involved but for the actually active leftists that part is only a sliver of their leftism and it’s not necessarily a bad thing— it’s very hard to imagine the world organized other than it is and one way we can be prepared to make the right decisions together when gaps appear is to discuss everything from every angle. I’m not going to pretend all the stuff online is in good faith and I suspect a good percentage of keyboard warriors who are not actually involved in leftward movement, but I do think in the context of real activism the bickering makes more sense.

  • rumschlumpel ( rumschlumpel@feddit.org ) 
    30·
    2 years ago

    A lot of online leftists aren’t doing anything because they don’t know how to do something (or are scared, e.g. of losing their job or of getting brutalized by the police). If you aren’t doing anything in The Real World™ there are only so many things left to do, and the internet is genuinely terrible about people who make mistakes or change their opinion.

  • kittenzrulz123 ( kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
    30·
    2 years ago

    As a leftist its also important to keep in mind we do differentiate between leftists who hold some opinions we disagree with compared to a Liberal who disagrees with us on nearly everything. Especially when said Liberals demand to be treated like leftists yet support imperalism, genocide, apartheid, capitalism, bigotry, and yet constantly call people “fake leftists” or “tankies”.

      • 0ops ( 0ops@lemm.ee ) 
        6·
        2 years ago

        I’ve seen conservatives lob the word tankie around before like they do with other scary sounding political words. But not here on lemmy. “Tankie” has a very precise meaning on lemmy that everyone here seems to understand, despite a few tankies trying to gaslight people into thinking the term has “lost it’s meaning”.

          • Umbrias ( Umbrias@beehaw.org ) 
            6·
            2 years ago

            someone who claims to be leftist but tacitly or gleefully supports authoritarianism, imperialism, or violent repression. Many are easily identifiable by their pointing to places that are not The West™️ and smoothing over, apologizing for, or denying, blatant horrors on the basis that they are unfriendly with the west. sometimes called red fascists.

            It’s actually important to ostracize these people as they are obviously the most blatant opportunists in leftist movements looking to implement authoritarian repressive regimes.

          • 0ops ( 0ops@lemm.ee ) 
            5·
            2 years ago

            In a nutshell, alternative-imperialists with a leftist bent. They’re hypocrites. “Imperialism is evil…with these exceptions, those empires are cool”.

            It’s frustrating trying to talk with tankies, because really I agree with practically all of their criticisms of the US and a few criticisms of NATO and the West at large. But then that gets turned around into a justification for X formerly-socialist country drafting soldiers to invade sovereign country “Y” with practically unanimous resistance, and I just don’t see how the hell that’s supposed to help the working class of either state.

  • orcrist ( orcrist@lemm.ee ) 
    26·
    2 years ago

    Right… Except this is true for all online communities. People talk a lot of shit and complain a lot. Cope with it or log off.

    Or blame it on the left, lol, whatever makes you happy.

    • buttfarts ( buttfarts@lemy.lol ) 
      12·
      2 years ago

      I am left and this is so fucking true though. So many pussy-ass towel wringing gutless cowards just want to pick bones out of tofu than actually act to make a meaningful difference because they are frozen with indecision over acadmic moral quandries

      • frezik ( frezik@midwest.social ) 
        8·
        2 years ago

        I wish we could all just agree on a few basics and do it. Like, can we support unions and do mutual aid? Yeah, it’s not nearly enough to fix all our problems, but it’s a start. Maybe it will help bring about anarcho syndicalist trotskyist solarpunk feminism, and maybe it won’t, but it’s a start.

        • WammKD ( WammKD@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
          3·
          2 years ago

          I haven’t figured out how to channel it into convincing others, yet (though I haven’t done a lot of activism for, like, going on a decade now), but I have been having the thought, for the last 4 years, that focusing on tangible goals could really help us.

          Just seeing the Republicans turn half a century of steadfast obsession into actually overturning Roe has me thinking we need material results fast.

          Because, if the one constant for our side since the 60s has been anything, it’s been a slow erosion at our ability to even effect change.

          I feel like even the need for lockstep consensus to work together wouldn’t be so direly needed if we had rank-choice voting and a dismantling of the two party system.

          To use your union example, more unions mean a slow of concentration of wealth which means less influence for the wealthy upon our society including more stability so there’s less desperation to vote for a Hail Mary solution like thinking Trump ever gave a single care about the price of eggs.

          Just…really concentrating on tangible goals and carving out progress on them.

          Of course, we’d need your aforementioned agreement, for that…

      • orcrist ( orcrist@lemm.ee ) 
        2·
        2 years ago

        It’s interesting how your comment undercuts the message that it’s trying to express. You got the vocabulary wrong. It was a good try though.

  • I Cast Fist ( ICastFist@programming.dev ) 
    4·
    2 years ago

    From my casual observation, leftists tend to be a lot more individualistic and tribalistic than people on the right, to the point where they would much rather join the right just to spite another left group.

  • Zero22xx ( Zero22xx@lemmy.myserv.one ) English
    2·
    2 years ago

    ‘Centrists’ don’t help much either because they too hold the left to a higher standard than the right and always seem to be looking for any excuse to whip out the ol’ “so much for the tolerant left” so that they can feel better about themselves when they vote for who they really wanted to vote for anyway.

    People on the right can say in plain English “I want to dismantle women’s rights and put all gay people into camps” and the ‘centrist’ will be like “hmmm yes that seems like a valid political opinion”. But the moment someone on the left drops the high road shit for once and bites back, the ‘centrist’, clutching pearls is like “See? This is why I’m supporting the bigots that hate everyone, because you SWORE and that’s unacceptable!”

    • hansolo ( hansolo@lemm.ee ) English
      0·
      2 years ago

      That’s not a Centrist viewpoint at all. That’s a solidly right viewpoint.

      The Centrist would, however, say “look, if you’re going to make your whole vibe about tolerance, that’s cool. I love it. But my homie, that’s a slippery slope you haven’t fully negotiated yet. So when your less disciplined people start to be big picture tolerant through on-paper intolerance, don’t expect me to do the same mental gymnastics to defend it that you do with your mom at Thanksgiving. How about you solve the problem before you create it by not being sloppy and bumbling your way into an obvious trap every bully has pulled since the dawn of time?”

      But hey, as a Centrist, the Left can’t discern me from someone like Bush 43 or a raging MAGA freak because anything right of far left is a legit fascist. Which is why I cant hang with you all, your labels are weird. But the Right usually wants to hang me for being a traitor, so one of y’all is far more worth dealing with occasional cringe.