this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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I'm not in the US, let's start there. I am in a territory that is generally left-leaning and has a left-leaning government, let's set that next.
And no, there are no other ways than consolidating power because a leftist without a government position is not useful to me at all. A leftist without a seat does not push good policies. They don't push any policies at all. Governments push policies. The only leftists who push good policies are in government.
There is no need to lie to be engaging, but you do need to convince people. You need to present arguments and you need to win those arguments in the eyes of the people. You need to show the alternatives are doing poorly and create an image that they are incompetent and the cause of the current set of issues. Which should be easy, because they are, by and large.
But that's not being done. The perception is that the left is deluded, splintered and naive. Those are all perceptions pushed by the right onto the left that the left sucks at dispelling. The implication in your response that popular, effective campaigning and grassroots political action is inherently immoral or requires immoral behavior is itself part of that problem. Hell, we are doing the thing right now. If we were on the fascist spectrum we wouldn't bother with this nitpicky argument and would just wait for whatever point of contention we can agree on and rally around it. We just suck at this.
Look, it's ultimately a technical problem. The other side saw the communication tools had a flaw and exploited it. Not because they're smart, but because they had a million monkeys on typewriters tucked away online and they randomly figured out they could influence real world events for a laugh. And then the nazis caught wind.
We missed that boat and then bought into their narrative that this was something they own that is evil and only they get to do, and so we're laying out a red carpet for them to own mainstream culture. It's excurciating to watch.
Well yeah. This we agree on, but it really did not sound like this is what you meant by what you wrote earlier.
No? You read me wrong then.
You were pushing this earlier on in the convo
Yeah, no, we suck at this, like I said.
This conversation is not winning the culture wars. This is the exact purity argument that keeps the left from power.
Find me a solution and I'll take it. But the solution can't be to keep doing what we're doing.
This convo isn't infighting, even if it isn't very productive. Neither of us are denouncing any leftist ideologies and we won't be voting against the left if I'm reading you correctly.
You are correct that something needs to change, and that thing is how we communicate with people. Deceit isn't necessary. It's the things you described that I had already described earlier that you for some reason then said was ineffectual before then suddenly supporting it when you were the one saying it?
I'm not sure I follow.
My concern is consistent: the way the left communicates, does propaganda and pushes issues is weak, fails to control the narrative and is further undermined by atomized, nuanced positions and infighting.
The right has learned to push a more cohesive narrative in a social media landscape, largely by allowing themselves to be inconsistent and focusing on winning small arguments at every opportunity until one sticks, at which point they all rally behind it.
The left sucks at that. Nobody will suspend their pet issues, nobody will poke at the mainstream to see what works, nobody will drop their short term goals to focus on the popular narratives for the chance of deploying impactful politics on those goals later.
I find this negligent in the current political landscape, and it's letting the far right run away with converting dissatisfaction into votes, even on issues where the left clearly has the strongest argument.
You really seem to think that the left just needs to win and is skill issue failing by not being strong enough. As an American who is currently living with the consequences of thinking "we just need to get good and vote better," pursuing that strategy is a dead end.
The right wing wins because that is its ONLY goal. You will always be at a disadvantage because of natural human disagreements that you can NEVER get rid of. You can't beat them at their game because they have fully surrendered themselves to WINNING, WINNING, and more WINNING.
It's clear that you'll never accept this fact, because it's much more convenient to think you can just work harder.
Well, as a not-American whose left wing actually secured a government, you are wrong. Winning is the ONLY goal, because when you win you get to do things and when you lose you do not get to do things. And if you're not doing things you're just talking online and I genuinely have less depressing stuff to discuss online if that's the only goal.
I also fail to see how finding that we need to work harder is convenient. From where I stand it's a pain in the butt.
I have taken many things from US cultural imperialism, good and bad. I am not taking cushy leftie defeatism the-system-won't-let us nonsense. Every American I've met is simultaneously convinced that any change or victory is impossible and also that the revolution will be immediate and violent.
Screw all that noise. The left wins when it deploys a winning strategy and engages in politics to secure more power than it loses over time.
Yeah, I get that. A big issue in America that makes leftism seem so impossible is just how tied up anti-leftist sentiment is with American national identity. Capitalism and a hatred of marxism is ancient, with most of the most powerful unions of the progressive era being staunchly anti-communist. It is illusory, as it is innately tied to our imperial identity, which is why dismantling it in the American psyche is so important.
For the record, I was fairly invested in promoting institutional power until recently, holding onto the fleeting hope that liberals would be willing to work at all to save their own system, and leftists would wise up and use what tools they had available. Now that America as a nation is irrevocably toast, I hope to weaken the tribal identity. I only seek to use the tools I have available, and national institutions are not one of them.
However, my real goal is simply survival. I can't get rid of Trump, so I only have to outlive them.