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370 points sillypuddy | 16 comments | | HN request time: 1.408s | source | bottom
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sho ◴[] No.16407784[source]
What is crazy about the the situation in SF is that even 5 or so years ago if you asked me what the "echo chamber" there was echoing I would have said libertarianism and some kind of techno-utopianism. The takeover by the proscriptive far-left has been astonishingly rapid, and it is absolutely real. I also know people who have left, and many more who absolutely keep their political and even philosophical views to themselves, especially after Damore.

It's been an extraordinarily fast takeover and I'd really like to know exactly what happened those 5 or so years ago to precipitate this seismic shift.

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1. wz1000 ◴[] No.16408051[source]
> The takeover by the proscriptive far-left

Americans have a very weird conception of what "far-left" means. Liberal feel good minority appeasement by billion dollar multinational corporations is as far from "far-left" as you can get.

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2. archagon ◴[] No.16408626[source]
Just people arguing in bad faith, I think.
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3. refurb ◴[] No.16408638[source]
Political views are relative.

I could say that there are no hard-right parties in Europe (with mainstream ideals - I'm ignoring the fascist parties).

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4. sho ◴[] No.16408649[source]
Interesting, especially since I am not American and I think I have a pretty good idea of what "far-left" means. Care to explain what you think it means?

I use it to describe any political ideology focussed on equality of outcome and legitimacy through elimination of self-judged "oppression", which is IMO as good a definition as any as the communist disasters of the 20th century.

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5. sho ◴[] No.16408669[source]
I hope that I demonstrate through my polite and hopefully-constructive replies that I am in fact arguing in good faith.

Once we abandon that assumption then all hope is lost.

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6. wz1000 ◴[] No.16408802[source]
Most "far-leftists" tend to view liberal identity politics as a distraction, or a way for the ruling classes to promote infighting and discord, occasionally handing out scraps to keep the proles occupied.

Leftists aren't really bothered about whether the CEO or President is black or white or male or female or transgender, but by the fact that any single person is allowed the wield the power that a CEO or President can yield. Many of them also reject reformist politics.

Black Panther Party member Fred Hampton(As good an example of a "far-left" American figure as you can find) can probably explain it better:

> We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.

> We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That's what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.

> We have to understand very clearly that there's a man in our community called a capitalist. Sometimes he's black and sometimes he's white. But that man has to be driven out of our community, because anybody who comes into the community to make profit off the people by exploiting them can be defined as a capitalist. And we don't care how many programs they have, how long a dashiki they have. Because political power does not flow from the sleeve of a dashiki; political power flows from the barrel of a gun. It flows from the barrel of a gun!

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/fhamptonspeech.html

A good rule of thumb is - Anything done by multi billion dollar corporations is probably not leftist.

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7. adventured ◴[] No.16408828[source]
You can't correctly say there are no hard-right parties in Europe. They're in nearly every European nation and often have large political positions. Ignoring that is like pretending the alt-right Breitbart crowd doesn't exist in the US. Much of Eastern Europe in particular is overflowing with a hard-right quasi-fascist ideology currently.
8. HumanDrivenDev ◴[] No.16408956[source]
> Americans have a very weird conception of what "far-left" means

And other Americans have a very weird conception of what far-left is outside of America.

There are nations out there that are very, very conservative compared to the US. Republican talking points would be far-left in much of the world outside Western Europe, Canada and Australasia.

9. wz1000 ◴[] No.16409006{4}[source]
"far-left" doesn't mean any singular thing, but a few characteristics I can think of are:

- Rejection of capitalism and private property

- Opposition to all forms of social hierarchy

- Rejection of electoral and reformist politics

- Revolutionary, often militant program

- Explicitly communist or anarchist in nature

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10. anigbrowl ◴[] No.16409219{3}[source]
http://wondermark.com/1k62/
11. anigbrowl ◴[] No.16409227[source]
Fn in France and AfD in Germany are firmly right, and it seems perverse to ignore fascist parties like Jobbik and others considering their relative electoral success, even if you believe that to be a flash in the pan. I spend a good deal of time worrying about this international drift.
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12. psyc ◴[] No.16409254[source]
It's very difficult to choose a single term to describe the cultural cluster that sho is referring to, that would not result in quibbling over the term, or whether it's a thing. I know which cultural cluster he's talking about. Closely related or alternate terms include social justice warrior, authoritarian left, regressive left, cultural marxist, identity politics, oppression stack, 3rd wave feminist, virtue-signaling left, neo-puritan, and so on. I've omitted a dozen other terms that are more like slurs, but I'm still a bit disappointed that most of these have some degree of negative connotation. I can't think of a totally neutral term that would be recognizable.
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13. refurb ◴[] No.16409408{3}[source]
How right are the non-fascist parties relative to the right in the US? That was my point.

For example, is there any right wing party advocating eliminating universal healthcare?

14. ◴[] No.16411654{5}[source]
15. throwitawaypls ◴[] No.16417550[source]
Progressive? That’s what they call themselves, mostly.
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16. psyc ◴[] No.16417788{3}[source]
I’m sure they do, but to me that term is much broader than the subculture I’m trying to describe.