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Who is this “militant left” and how are they acting anything like liberals? It’s the liberals who are vote blue no matter who, oh we lost an election let’s go even further right to court voters who will never vote for us while pissing off our base so we can once again lose an election.
Not all, but plenty on both left and liberals basically abandoned the working class by caricaturising them as redneck, racist and misogynist hillbillies, rather than acknowledging the economic grievances which the right exploited to their advantage. Even after the recent 2024 US presidential election, the left and liberals started to blame Latino and black voters for electing Trump. But ultimately, it is down to economic issues. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez herself mentioned that many Latino families are living in under one household with other families. Many liberals and leftists-- many of whom are middle class and tend to be quite affluent and sheltered-- started to say that Latinos elected Trump because of machismo. Liberals and leftist also said black voters are "dumb". But really, it's down to economic anxiety. Trump promised tax cuts amid the growing inflation. He promised tariffs on imports because the working class thinks this will encourage many companies to re-shore and boost buying American, even though it may not be the case. There are many other factors that compounds but it will take too long to list them all.
Of course sure, many Republican voters and are racists and dumb, but many were turned because they were manipulated. It is the same with the Germans during the Great Depression. Voting for a populist extremist is may be dumb, but people are desperate to cling to any lifeline. A lot of those on the left and liberal side have safety net (and they have a blindspot not to realise this), however, the working class had it pulled underneath from them when outsourcing happened en masse but no alternatives were put in place. Many areas left with no jobs are manipulated to hate on immigrants. Many left/liberals don't realise this and start to look down on the working class. I mean, the working class used to vote left/liberal after all. The Rust belt loved Obama. There is a massive reason why they now vote Republican, and it is not always because of ignorance and bigotry that's for sure.
Someone mentioned about immigration as well. It might controversial to say this, but some areas are genuinely overwhelmed by having too many people coming in but there is not enough infrastructure to accommodate the swell in population. It is not the people or the local's fault if they blame immigrants, but the underinvestment and under-resourcing of communities brought by neoliberal policies. Many refugees and immigrants can't afford the more expensive places, so they go to poorer areas where there limited jobs and hospital capacities. This creates an artificial division among people: pitting the working class and immigrants. But some of the liberals and left who are more affluent and living in better areas, unaware of their own privileges because of cognitive blindspots, do not see it that way and malign the poorer folks as inherently intolerant.
You keep using left and liberal like they’re interchangeable when they absolutely aren’t.
In 2016 the left went for Bernie sanders, who had an economic populist platform that spoke to the grievances that came from 2008. The democrats - liberals - kneecapped him and shunned his supporters.
It’s the liberals who took minorities for granted and are now turning on them now that they’re no longer useful. It’s the liberals who thought they could just run on demographics and identity politics alone and not bother with a real platform other than “we’re not trump”. I find it pretty offensive that you lump the mythical “left” in this country with liberals. There’s very few actual leftists and whole lot of liberals who think they’re left because they want to reform capitalism with social democracy instead of overthrow it like it deserves to be.
I’d be considered a somewhat anti immigration leftist, because I work in an industry that undercuts local labor and imports cheaper J1s and H1Bs. During covid, instead of a merit raise of 10-50 cents we got a three dollar + raise because they couldn’t import foreign labor for cheap. Tight immigration used to be a somewhat left wing stance, economic protectionism. Loose immigration just benefits business owners and fucks over labor. Obviously we’re a nation of immigrants and we need immigration but we also need to clamp down hard on businesses who take advantage of cheap labor to fuck over American labor like myself. I hate that the immigration conversation focuses on “illegals” and not on businesses fucking over American labor by hiring cheaper legal and illegal labor instead.
And I think race is overplayed of an issue when it comes to immigration. A large quantity of immigrants coming in are not English speakers, most are Spanish speakers. I’m from NY originally and I’ve been gone for almost a decade living in the whitest state ever and I had to go home to take care of my mom - I heard almost entirely Spanish being spoken many places instead of English. When I grew up it was English 90% of the time and now it’s Spanish probably 40-50% of the time. That’s culturally shocking and it’s fair for English speakers to be irritated by it and feel like they’re being replaced. I have a ton of respect for people who speak more than one language but due to a brain injury I’m not capable of it despite trying. It’s crazy to see how much my hometown changed in the decade I’ve been gone. It’s unrecognizable.
Also it shouldn’t be controversial to say certain places are getting completely overwhelmed by immigrants. Of course the liberals will paint you as a rAcIsT for saying so but look at how hard they lost this election to see how tired people are of their bullshit.
We have a racist history that bleeds into the present day no doubt but not everything is because of race.
I mean both. And there is some merit to the criticism that both liberals and left can be seen as smug. Again, it's not all but many from both groups are. Thing is, as many people have been lifted out of poverty, the traditional base of the left that is the working class have become middle class to upper class themselves. Many of those folks may still say they identify as leftist, but they became privileged and do not realise or acknowledge it. They may say that they believe in social and economic justice and mention they feel bad for the poor and homeless; but at the same time block the push for building affordable housing because "it ruins the view from their back garden" or they won't say that it depreciates the value of their property. "Champagne socialists" and "limousine liberals" are real and rightful pejorative terms after all.
Let's agree to disagree but I think social democracy is the best system one could go so far. I am very sympathetic to worker-run organisations but if it is so effective, why hasn't everybody set them ubiquitously? Co-operatives exist and there is absolutely no reason to prevent people to create them (however, I am surprised to hear that many Americans never heard of co-ops and found it to be an alien idea so it is not common in the US). The main issue with worker-run businesses is that people usually elect to increase their wages so it could negatively affect the operational cost.
I very much agree with you that mass immigration affect working class wages. I have worked various jobs both blue and white collar jobs. When I was working on the factory floor, so many immigrants work excessive hours without question. They would even want to work seven days straight if they could. It raises the expectations for everyone since the management is using the outlier as the new norm, which causes resentment from other workers who are expected to follow impossible standards. But the problem with it is that due to cost of living crisis, our wages isn't sufficient. The wages barely nudged for factory, blue collar workers since the pandemic. Because many immigrants benchmark their current earnings to that from what they were earning in their old country, they personally feel much wealther. They don't question their current wages, and so companies offer that wage rate which do not stack up with the rising inflation. Immigrants are also less likely to unionise, which is why many businesses prefer to hire them. So, I can kinda see now why many local working class inhabitants feel resentment.
I am an immigrant myself so I can't complain and blame other immigrants; but I grew up in the West so I am Westernised. I am class conscious fortunately due to my education and having grown up in the West where the history of putting down the working class is taught. But many immigrants have different experiences and education so they are less class conscious. What many immigrants only have known in their lives is struggle and making ends meet. They have little time to think above the basic security needs if we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs (and also humans inherently crave to look for approval from others through work).
The main cause I believe is the mismanagement of globalisation. The current international order is actually an anarchy but only very few realise this. Social democracy is accused of still enabling exploitation of workers in developing countries. But it is as if wealthy social democratic countries have jurisdictions to tell other governments to improve the working conditions of their own citizens and the environment. The minimum wage in richer countries is considered upper class salary in developing countries. Thus, many immigrants come in droves to developed countries which in turn drive down wages for the working class in those countries. The perception is skewed because of global wealth disparity, which then manifests materially resulting in pitting the working class among each other, whether one is white, black, Asian, Indonesian, Irish etc. Needless to say, there is no global minimum wage to standardise for everyone. And for that to happen, there has to be a global authority to set the proper working conditions and equalise the playing field for everyone. I'm actually an advocate for a global government for this reason and among many others.
Nation states have their own different rules which does not correspond with one another. This creates what is essentially a fiefdom of sorts with citizens of each countries are being manipulated by their own elites to enrich themselves at the expense of the masses. In spite of rhetoric we hear from elites, international laws are toothless because they do not have legal power and authority. National laws take more precedence. That's why wars, climate change and exploitation still happens because of this. Countries, especially bigger ones, could act with impunity. This is a fiefdom with each nations having their own oligarchs ruling and making poor people fight for each other.
The real root cause of migrant and local tension is because the current anarchic system. There is no actual order internationally contrary to the championjng of the term "international order". Wars and climate change displace people because of lack of legal punishment against warmongerers and polluters. I understand you might say about changing culture and in relation to my proposal of a world government, but I have written an essay than I intended so that is another discussion for another day.
You’re still wrong. That’s not the left, those are socially progressive liberals. The left are not limousine liberals who are concerned about their precious property values. It’s extremely frustrating that you continue to repeat this lie, using liberal and left interchangeably. Liberalism is a right wing ideology and mostly incompatible with the left. of course you think social democracy is the greatest thing ever, it’s a right wing idea (liberalism, but with more reform!) that’s dressed up looking left. It doesn’t threaten capitalism, it barely even reforms it. The hierarchy of power - the bourgeois and petit bourgeois- remain in place but the serfs get a couple more crumbs of bread thrown to them. Oh and every single social democracy that Europeans love to be smug about still rely on colonialism and exploitation of the global south and in norways case fossil fuels. Because social democracy doesn’t change anything, it’s just window dressing to give just enough crumbs to the serfs that they don’t demand more.
This whole little bit reminds me of how liberals and dumb people on the left (mostly progressives and social democrats who aren’t really left but get lumped in anyways because there is no left in America) who’ve been utterly brainwashed into thinking obamacare/aca is the best thing since sliced bread. It’s again, a right wing idea, created by the right wing heritage foundation for Republican mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts. Obama stole it from him, initially added a single payer option, democrat joe Lieberman, owned by the insurance industry single-handedly blocked it, and now we’re left with an insurance industry handout that doesn’t provide healthcare (see deny delay despose for an example of what they do) and yet everyone to the left of the tea party thinks it’s practically universal healthcare that needs to be protected at all costs. It’s fucking delusional. The left wing ideology would be to nationalize the healthcare industry, not this fucking bureaucratic bullshit that creates useless “jobs” that exist nowhere else in the world while denying care.
This is an assumption that’s completely incorrect. The tech industry is known for importing all their workers from India, and from the higher castes. These people aren’t poor, but they’ll work for less in America, and on top of that they bring caste bias with them and they are ripe for becoming fascists if they aren’t already (see modi’s India). In my field the legal immigrants are rich college kids from South America on summer holiday doing a “cultural exchange”. They don’t realize they’re undercutting local labor and they’re not the problem, american businesses are the problem.
I wish I read this part of your comment first and I would of not even bothered with writing the rest since you have no clue what you’re talking about. This is NOT anarchy. That’s not what fucking anarchy means. I hate how liberals completely fucked up the definition of words themselves to absolutely confuse everyone to the liberal elites benefit. Anarchy in its purest definition is the absence of hierarchy. Our globalist world is the complete opposite of that. There’s a hierarchy, and you and I are somewhere near the middle to the bottom. The globalist elite are at the top. Money and power rule the world, money is just an abstraction of power. There’s very clear rules and order, I don’t know how you get “anarchy” LOL out of that.
And you want a global government? LOL GLOBALIST LIBERAL.
And you blame everything currently going on on “anarchy”? LOL.
International laws are only applied on leaders from non western countries. The UN is a fucking joke. When they arrest George w bush for his war crimes I’ll take them seriously.
Edit: I forgot to respond to your first paragraph. Again, you obviously wasn't reading that I am separating liberals and left. In any case, it doesn't matter. Regardless of the spectrum, both liberals and left are still seen as smug and NIMBYs because of these idiots, and it is not without merit. Even Slavoj Zizek made similar observation. Those idiots may give the both ideologies bad name, but unfortunately they are not insignificant numbers, especially during the height of "snowflake" college in mid 2010s, and it adds ammo for the right.
Well, how are social democracies able to deal with other countries that are not fellow social democracies, because the latter have different values, laws and regulations? You obviously ignored the part where I said other countries don't have legal jurisdictions on other countries' labour laws. Precisely that's why there needs to be a world government to streamline the laws and processes.
That being said, in a utopian ideal of what anarchy is, it is self-organising society and independent or autonomous from each other. Well, what do you think are nation states? Isn't it already an entity with a self-organising society? As we speak, the supposed international order and rules-based order are neither ordered nor have rules. If you read the fine print, many legal definitions are not actually legal. For example, the word "guarantee" is not actually guaranteed. "Agreement" is not actually an agreement. In international "law", those latter words do not have legal weight. Parties can break them without penalty. In essence, these types of deal are based on principle and mutual understanding, and therefore no actual arbitrary penalty for breaking. That's why in many cases, international courts could condemn individuals but do not have the power to actually arrest and prosecute them, because they have no legal power-- out of jurisdiction. The global agreement on climate change is the same. There is no legal punishment for any countries that failed to follow the guidelines to reduce carbon emissions. Nicaragua was right about it when they initially refused to sign the Paris climate change agreement because it did not go far enough. As I mentioned, it is simply an "agreement" after all. Many countries in the global south received grants to improve their infrastructures to reduce carbon emissions and build renewable energy technologies, but findings reported that much of those money went to building luxuries like hotels deemed to be carbon-neutral because it has solar panels and whatnot. The only case where an international deal have legal and serious repercussions is if the agreement is actually signed as "treaty". But the Paris climate change is not a treaty because it is by intention.
Anarchism only works on small scale with similar-minded folks. But as you can see, much of the world at the moment are not like-minded. The world is too big for it at the moment. Bigger societies (read countries) bullying smaller ones, it is impractical. International "laws" are not respected because there is no legal teeth to enforce them. Perhaps if future technological advances allow for improved communications and transportation to allow better cultural exchanges, which facilitates different cultures to coalesce and converge into one common culture, then why not. I would be an anarchist if I wasn't a social democrat. But like I mentioned, we are already in anarchy, but it's the one you imagined and it's not pretty as no doubt you cannot deny.
The reason why the UN is powerless is because they are not given power. You complain about the UN being useless, but would you approve to give them power in order to stop wars and enforce global wide laws in order to stop climate change? I thought so. Most people don't realise about this farcical contradiction but now you know.
Indians are not the only immigrant groups. There plenty of other nationalities with different mindsets because of different cultures. I worked with Somalis and they work too hard (and I assume you probably already know what is going on in their home country so you get the idea why they work too hard). One hasn't even taken holidays for the entire year and was forced by management to take all of it before the year ends. But it's not even Somalis, other immigrants also even make you feel guilty if you do not do overtime almost almost seven days. I think is tinge of envy and think I am rich. I am not by any stretch of imagination, but I have enough savings as safety net and I don't live beyond my means (unlike most people from my experience). And I think a lot of immigrants neither have a concept of hobby nor do other activities outside of work, because I work to live not living to work. And it makes sense, most immigrants come for economic reasons. Although, work is meant to put food on the table, put roof over my head and afford the occasional frivolties and fund my hobby. I value my own personal happiness first than some CEO's yearly bonus.