I just find it amusing that every self-described leftist who accuses me of being a fascist invariably gets torn to pieces by other self-described leftists a week later, who then get torn to pieces in turn, and so on ad infinitum, like a bizarre political karma system.
I’d always heard about the left’s — factionalism? circular firing squads? Like, “People’s Front of Judea/Judean People’s Front” har har har but boy did tumblr make that real to me
Not JUST the way that the left - political, cultural, etc. would tear itself up constantly, drive off potential allies, etc., but the contrast.
Like, remember the “Axis of Evil” of right-tumblrs a few years ago? Whose symbol was ≠? (“equality” woulda worked too, I thought)
If ANYONE, they were an incoherent coalition, from Christian traditionalists to proto-ancap free marketers to Third Reich cosplayers to folks from Jewish expat anticommunist traditions like Communism Kills, but they stayed friendly, pissing out of the tent
The essential irony of people who want to destroy the left (and this also goes for feminism specifically, and for Marxism specifically) is that the only thing keeping those groups from destroying themselves is the external pressure of enemies who blatantly belong to an outside faction and lump them all together. If there was a sustained 20-year period where nobody worth noticing was trying to destroy “the left” it would atomize completely from its own internal conflicts.
I’m not exactly sure what the deal is, honestly. I think it’s a thing to some extent on the right, but why it’s so much more prevalent on the left, that eludes me.
For a long time, my estimate was that there are simply more ways to be left-wing than to be right-wing.
I’m no longer so sure.
I’ve discussed what WW called “localism-ingroupism” on this blog, and perhaps the right-wingers are, in some sense, less universalist. If one believes in a world of nations and differing traditions, it isn’t so necessary that literally every territory on Earth adopts the One True Ideology.
Or maybe it’s just that the right-wingers do have a higher neural threat recognition and consider themselves outnumbered even when they aren’t.