Why does the right wing nowadays blame everyone else for them being right wing?

[TooBigForMyBoots]

Back when I was growing up and studying, one of the most important tenets of the right wing was Personal Responsibility.

Over the a very recent number of years it seems the right have ceded this, blaming centrists and the left for their failures, their successes and even for them becoming right wing at all. Labour being to blame for 14 years of Tory incompetence, including the Trans shitshow. Mean strangers on the internet being to blame for Brexit. The Marxist international money markets being to blame for Liz Truss's disastrous economic event. The BBC. The Civil Service. Feminists. Human rights courts.

No responsibility from the right themselves. Just blame and excuses. Even the overwhelming success of Donald Trump is being blamed on the left, the Democrats and even Kamala Harris personally. Did Trump and the Republicans not run a better campaign and win on their merits?

What has happened to the right?

Wrong thread.

I find that when you challenge them with facts, some squirm and then pull out a stupid conspiracy theory that flies in the face of science and rationality.

The left is unrecognisable to a lot of people now. Many staunch Labour and SNP voters in Scotland now feel more aligned with an centre right party that doesn't exist. They feel politically homeless or they vote Conservative because they won't put their vote to a party that doesn't speak for them anymore. That's not difficult to understand.

My parents voted Labour then SNP all their lives. Their political opinions haven't changed. The parties have.

I think they aren’t blaming they are explaining. When someone says “you claim to be right wing yet voted for x.” The response is “well the left is no longer left wing, it’s authoritarian, deeply entrenched in progressivisms which has nothing to do with the old political left which was focused on economic and political equality rather than equity and which sought to ensure minorities were not discriminated against”.

Progressive policies have very little to do with left wing policies as most people would recognise them.

I agree. It's less about economic equality and more about woke mania.
The left needs to get back to what it used to stand for. Losing the working class because they're more concerned about appeasing the gen Zers with identity politics was a foolish move. I'd say these parties deserve what they get for doing that, but nobody deserves to lose to the likes of Trump.

Do you hear this from right wing commentators?
I hear it alot from left wing commentators - i.e. people voted for Trump because we (the left) failed them.
But I've never heard a right winger say it? They just think people vote for them because they're convinced by right wing arguments.

I think it's more people being called ' right wing' because they don't subscribe to the identitarian authoritarian Left. Most people are centrist and vote for centrist parties. They are able to see others points of view without being traumatised by it. They have voted for a centre Left Labour Party, but the Left call Starmer a fascist. People joined unions to get employment rights and protections. Not to pay for people to go on protest marches. People who would have called themselves Left Wing are now apparently all fascists because they don't want to be involved in the purity spiral that is the identitarian self styled ' progressive' Left.

I’ve not seen this.

I think people who thought they were left wing are being accused of being right wing by the left who sprinted so far left they fell off the page.
Actual right wing people don’t say any such thing. Centrists and left wing people may. Mainly it’s an accusation from the off the page people.

Progressive policies have very little to do with left wing policies as most people would recognise them.

this really nails it for a lot of previous left leaning folk I think…

Feminists? Is it right wing to be a feminist now?

Identitarianism is a right wing philosophy. As is facism.

Politically homeless springs to mind.

Coming from someone who has voted both sides in my life.

@TooBigForMyBoots

Identitarianism is a right wing philosophy. As is facism.

Right... so what does that tell you about the Left nowadays? It's the Left who are identity obsessed and fascistic in their censorship and rules about what people can and can't say.

The Left is eating itself. Fuck them.

I miss the old-fashioned ranty left. You just don’t hear much anymore about the fridge magnet far left parties: the ones where you re-arrange the words ‘Socialist’, ‘Communist’, ‘Democratic’, ‘People’s’, ‘Workers’, ‘Leninist’, ‘Stalinist’, ‘Maoist’, ‘Independent’ etc etc and stick ‘Party’ on the end. There were loads of them.

They were always the same: all dressed by Oxfam, with beards for the men. And, my, they were boring people.

But their hearts were in the right place - mostly - and I’m nostalgic for their wide-eyed innocence and gullibility.

The trouble with the modern left is that it lost the big economic arguments and only has social identity causes to fall back on.

Don't forget "student politics" and all the other witticisms the side who don't believe in snark indulge in

Yes, it’s true that that gets chucked about.

But it’s not the students I miss. They’ll always be able to chase foolish causes and act like ten-year-olds going through the age of certainty - left or right.

It’s the Wolfie Smiths and Deidre Sparts that have gone. Not even Momentum managed to bring back that sort of political lifestyle and commitment. Momentum was all a bit part-time and voguish. A shame.

David Aaronovitch’s book evokes the old left world very well.

You're thinking of the time of teachers with elbow patches and longish hair, activists with badges who went on marches and people who had allotments and made their own wine.

I am. But it’s the old left political way of life I’ve really got in mind. The days when fellow travellers met up in each other’s suburban living rooms to discuss smashing the system. And produced a lot of badly printed pamphlets.

I haven’t seen a Socialist Workers street vendor for many years. I realise the internet’s changed things; but I still miss the hopeful spirit and DIY publishing and street presence of the left.

Oh for a nuclear free zone mural!

I miss those days too. The 80s was a hotbed of that kind of activity and I was really into it. We hated Ronnie Reagan and were motivated by the dangers of the arms race. He looks tame and sane now compared to the orange rapist. So does Bush, and there was a lot of activity then, too. But after the Bush era, much of the left went left, so to speak. They stopped paying attention to the economy and ran with identity politics and the collective hysteria of young people, most of whom don't even vote FFS. It ruined everything.
It shows how bad things have gotten when you're actually nostalgic for the cold war period and the Bush years.

It tells me that people throw words around willy nilly without knowing what they mean.

I rather think the Right ate itself under the Tories

Yep. Nails it for me. As a centre left voter I’d love to vote for Labour, but they don’t want me. I don’t vote for misogyny.

Edited: quote fail!

Meant to quote this