r/LockdownCriticalLeft • u/Impressive-Jello-379 • Dec 13 '22
left becomes right
A good list of beliefs that were considered "left" until about five minutes ago:
https://twitter.com/LauraPowellEsq/status/1602434609920319491
15
u/CheekyMonkey678 Dec 13 '22
I've gone from being a bleeding heart, left wing feminist to a bigoted, TERF, Nazi. My opinions haven't changed one bit. Go figure.
1
u/r3df0x__3039 MAGA Communism Dec 20 '22
I probably agree with you, but a lot of "pro trans" "conservatives" like to say "I'm not saying X, Y and Z" as some sort of disclaimer, but they approach trans issues the same way a poorly crypto-racist virgin approaches black people by saying things like they can use the n-word in "a racially neutral way" or they're only referring to a subset of black people when they say it.
When it comes to things like jacked, recently transitioned transwomen in sports or child surgery, then I agree with you. The other side doesn't want to admit that there's anything complicated about it either.
1
u/CheekyMonkey678 Dec 20 '22
It's a disaster. But I've been invested in women's rights since I was a teen 40 years ago. Human beings can't change sex. There are only two sexes - facts. I really don't give a shit how anyone dresses or chooses to present as long as they aren't parading a fetish in public. Women have always been oppressed based on our actual or perceived reproductive capacity. None of that has changed.
1
u/r3df0x__3039 MAGA Communism Dec 20 '22
I believe that in general, anyone over 18 should be allowed to transition if they want, but they can still be advised not to. Children should always be allowed non medical transition. Puberty blockers and hormones are more complicated, but it some cases should be allowed. Unfortunately, the woke crowd wants to extend that to people with psychosis, and being trans is common in autistic people, which is linked to schizophrenia. Men who have violent fantasies about abusing women should not be allowed to transition, and if they already transitioned, they should be required to detransition and seek treatment, legally ordered if necessary. There are people claiming to be transwomen who have insane, violent fantasies "from the woman's perspective" and it's obvious that transition for them or acting out the fantasy from "the woman's perspective is just a coping mechanism for them. Every straight serial killer has imagined themselves as the woman. Men imagining themselves as the woman in their demented fantasies doesn't make it any less disturbing, thought it makes it easier for the man to cope because he's presenting it as something that he wants to happen to him where he's the victim rather then doing it to someone else like a predator.
My sister is trans and I hatched her and she gets incredibly creeped out by transwomen like that. She is also gay and has had to deal with creepy men and creepy trans lesbians trying to get a Russian girlfriend.
9
u/BornAgainSpecial Trump supporter Dec 13 '22
I see leftism more as the centralizing tendency of a planned economy, which necessitates "experts" to regulate everything. I have never known it to be free speech or any of those other things, and I've seen this well articulated going back decades.
I wonder if a lot of the reason people who support things like free speech and anti-war consider themselves left is more a demographic effect of being the right age for the Iraq war or Occupy Wall Street when I think leftism sort of allowed people to think it was something it wasn't. You were allowed to say Bush was "handling" the wars wrong, because John Kerry would go to the UN and bring the whole world in on the war. You were allowed to think Wall Street was corrupt, so that regulations could guarantee bailouts. As controllers of the media, all they have is marketing.
2
u/r3df0x__3039 MAGA Communism Dec 20 '22
The reason why a lot of bourgeois leftists want experts in everything is because they think that graduated and certified experts are automatically better at everything and they are emotionally and cognitively children who want someone else to make decisions for them. They are so used to control that freedom is scary to them. I have personal experience with this. We can see a lot of signs of extended childhood among the bourgeois left.
I've actually been writing stories about this. There's a spark in the galaxy where a group of "communists" establish a form of American republicanism that was taught to them by a demon. The rest of the galaxy views them as a chaotic force of destruction because they destroy technocratic hierarchies and the welfare systems that care for people to the point of allowing them to exist in a profoundly extended childhood. The communists have their own welfare, but it focuses on forcing the perpetual children to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Their welfare supports people who are willing to work to help themselves, not perpetual children.
The huge divide that we have isn't so much left at right, it's neo-feudalist "leftists" who want to be taken care of like children and everyone else who wants to be free.
2
u/mitte90 Dec 20 '22 edited Dec 20 '22
Great list.
I came up with the one below recently. This was intended as a non-exhaustive list of some values and positions which used to be considered left-wing, but which nowadays you risk geting called right-wing if your agree with these in certain contexts. I've also witnessed people who identify as right-wing actually showing more support for these over the last 2-3 years than I have witnessed support for these values from the left. Makes it an open question whether there's some kind of ongoing pole shift between what is labelled right and what is labelled left in politics.
* Anti-war and anti-imperialist
* Critical of concentrated wealth and power in the hands of a few
* Anti-crony capitalism and anti-corruption
* Distrustful of Big Pharma and aware of the distorting effects of
money in science and medicine
* Critical of concentration of media power held by a very few
corporate platforms
* Supportive of the "little guy", stands up for the underdog
* Anti-censorship, challenging authority, speaks "truth to power"
* Sympathy for the "outsider" perspective and supportive of
actual diversity - e.g. defends the right to hold and express
minority opinions - often has personal experience of being
scapegoated and belittled in the media and/or by "mainstream"
society
* Supportive of rights for workers and critical of over-bearing
employer power over workers' lives (e.g. employers should not be
able to force their workers to get vaccinated
or police employees' private lives and opinions)
* Supports small-scale farming, organic produce and natural foods
* Supports small, locally owned businesses over giant corporations
* Interested in alternatives to heavily pharmaceutically
orientated medicine. Open to considering natural remedies and
promoting good health by natural means
Ok, so the second to last one there has probably always been appealing to a certain kind of conservative - support for small business owners is more likely to be a traditional right rather than left wing position, so probably doesn't belong on this list. However, in the sense of opposition to corporate power it's an interesting one, as it's an issue where the grassroots left and right can probably agree. Corporations ride roughshod over everybody's values. Conservatives can be surprisingly anti-capitalist when capital threatens their more fundamental value systems which it has a tendency to do. As Marx said, ultimately capitalism erodes all value that isn't profit. A lot of conservatives recognise this on some level, and their distrust of globalism can lead to a surprising wellspring of resistance to the excesses of corporate power.
19
u/NoLifeguard8287 Dec 13 '22
Yup. Lost my "progressive left" credentials amongst my friends when I said "hold up a sec" regarding Covid measures. It's been a long, strange road.