this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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Me oh my. Yeah no there are other ways than "consolidating power" and lying to people. You can engage people emotionally without being manipulative and still push good policies.
Also, that all sounds very US centric and honestly a bit wrong. It is usually the libs that deplatform and refuse to cooperate with socialists. That's certainly the case within the democratic party. Same here in norway, with liberals not working with socialists (and rather the populists instead), and with the soc dems only ever reluctantly cooperating with us. It was announced, to my joy, a few days ago that LO (a big union) will finally give some money to the red party (a socialist party) because the reds getting enough votes is the only way the social democrats will win.
Edit: This is also my general understanding of politics everywhere. That centrists and right wingers (libs) have no interest in working with anyone left of them. It's certainly how fascists have won elections all around the world.
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.
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.