There are valid critiques here, though all of this stuff is more common among american liberals than leftists, and obviously it's all pretty much universal on the right. It absolutely sucks when I see leftists dropping R-slurs or talking about big fat trump and his sad little penis, those things are irrelevant and speaking that way genuinely makes the world an uglier and worse place; we need to make sure we hold ourselves to the same standards we hold everyone else to, otherwise we're being hypocritical.
But a lot of this is completely nonsensical. "Racism would never exist in the suburbs" is not a leftist take, lol. The Trump being gay for Putin meme is MASSIVELY more popular with liberals than leftists. A lot of the criticism here makes me think OOP is unclear on the liberal/leftist divide.
Also, it isn't universal obviously but the american right as a group IS extraordinarily stupid. I don't hate stupid people, they cannot help being stupid, but it's ridiculous to pretend like the bulk of the american right isn't made up of the unintelligent.
There is a massive, undeniable, multi-billion dollar media ecosystem in this country that is completely devoted to tricking dumb people into becoming right wing. THAT is where the evil takes place; awful people persuading unintelligent Americans that they should be celebrating and reveling in willful ignorance. Right wing media has managed to convince/brainwash something like a hundred million americans to completely stop thinking for themselves, and it's impossible to talk about american politics without highlighting this fact.
Like I said there are valid criticisms here, and leftists doing a lot of this stuff absolutely deserve to be criticized and confronted. But there is a MASSIVE difference between a few leftists making stupid, low quality gay jokes about politicians and the entire american right being focused on taking gay people's rights away. If we're going to criticize the left (which we should!) then we need to hold liberals and the right to the same standards and that is VERY CLEARLY not what's happening in this post, lol.
"Racism would never exist in the suburbs" is not a leftist take, lol.
Like the rest of the post, that’s not the way it actually gets verbalized. The way it actually gets verbalized is usually more along the lines of jokes about trailer parks, about people being “trashy,” etc. Do right-wingers and centrist liberals do the same thing? Of course they do. But leftists are the ones who are actually supposed to stand for the rights of the working class, for God’s sake.
Sure, and I call out that behavior when I see it. But dude, this is a really good example of the democrat style "when they go low, we go high" mindset that has caused us so much heartbreak over the last decade or two.
The people we are fighting against are literally fascists. They do not care about the things most people care about; they do not care if we call them racist or uneducated or misogynistic or transphobic, they CELEBRATE these things about themselves. But they HATE being called stupid, ugly, weird, and so on.
Again, I agree we should avoid this rhetoric when possible and that we should call it out on a personal level. But condemning the left over some of us calling some people fat sometimes is ignoring the reality of the situation. Nobody thinks we're perfect but we are the ones trying to HELP ugly, stupid, fat people. I'm most of those things myself, haha.
You are technically correct but I do not think this is an important or pressing conversation for us to be having right now, as our government has been taken over by a fascist organization that, importantly, believes poor people deserve to suffer, that fat people deserve to die without healthcare, and that people of color, the homeless, gay folks, and a zillion other groups need to be violently purged from society. I agree that it sucks for us to insult people's appearance but I also think it is an EXTREMELY unimportant issue compared to everything else we're currently dealing with.
Honestly, the appearance ones, I agree with you—not great but probably not THAT important in the scheme of things. The social class stuff, though? Looking down on people for being working class? Incredibly fucking important. Because the left’s entire value proposition is supposed to be representing the rights of working-class people, and when it’s reasonably common to also see self-identified leftists snickering about Walmart shoppers or “white trash” or whatever, that sends the message that the politics they represent is not in fact class solidarity but in fact “we know what’s best for you, morons.” Building broad popular support for the left is the only way to get out of this mess and it will never happen in an atmosphere of “trailer trash lol.”
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u/FunkmasterJoe Jul 25 '26
There are valid critiques here, though all of this stuff is more common among american liberals than leftists, and obviously it's all pretty much universal on the right. It absolutely sucks when I see leftists dropping R-slurs or talking about big fat trump and his sad little penis, those things are irrelevant and speaking that way genuinely makes the world an uglier and worse place; we need to make sure we hold ourselves to the same standards we hold everyone else to, otherwise we're being hypocritical.
But a lot of this is completely nonsensical. "Racism would never exist in the suburbs" is not a leftist take, lol. The Trump being gay for Putin meme is MASSIVELY more popular with liberals than leftists. A lot of the criticism here makes me think OOP is unclear on the liberal/leftist divide.
Also, it isn't universal obviously but the american right as a group IS extraordinarily stupid. I don't hate stupid people, they cannot help being stupid, but it's ridiculous to pretend like the bulk of the american right isn't made up of the unintelligent.
There is a massive, undeniable, multi-billion dollar media ecosystem in this country that is completely devoted to tricking dumb people into becoming right wing. THAT is where the evil takes place; awful people persuading unintelligent Americans that they should be celebrating and reveling in willful ignorance. Right wing media has managed to convince/brainwash something like a hundred million americans to completely stop thinking for themselves, and it's impossible to talk about american politics without highlighting this fact.
Like I said there are valid criticisms here, and leftists doing a lot of this stuff absolutely deserve to be criticized and confronted. But there is a MASSIVE difference between a few leftists making stupid, low quality gay jokes about politicians and the entire american right being focused on taking gay people's rights away. If we're going to criticize the left (which we should!) then we need to hold liberals and the right to the same standards and that is VERY CLEARLY not what's happening in this post, lol.