Is the left collapsing?

[Bamc1977]

I recently watched an interesting video from a controversial YouTuber arguing that the left have taken the contractions and absurdities in the ideology to their logical conclusions and are now slowly collapsing m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd2FTtu0sVE&t=3024s
This vlogger isn’t a feminist and seems to be an old fashioned liberal from the past. So I wondered what feminists who are not onboard with trans agenda though, if the same conclusions are being reached by those with different political perspectives? I’m particularly interested as I was a Labour Party member who quit the party in disgust and joined UKIP and this youtuber is one of several high profile ones that have recently also joined

The problem is that what the left has done with ID politics is actually fairly similar in end point to what people like the alt right are doing. So it sort of stops being about right vs left and starts becoming more about ... well I’m not sure to be honest. I’m a scientist not a politician/sociologist

But my view is that both are ending up in the same place. The alt right are attacking along race lines and the MRA groups (of which the subset of TRA activists who cause trouble are a part imo) are attacking along sex lines.

It’s a pushback against the rise of women and ethnic minorities IMO. Before you could be a mediocre white man and be king of the universe for it, but less so now (which is a good thing.)

The result will be a total loss of class based protection for women and minorities, in favour of white men and their sexual rights/rights to be in charge. And corporate dominance. In fact, the corporate dominance is here already. I was watching the new blade runner a while back and musing on how that aspect was seen as a dystopia future then and is now just the norm.

The left and the alt right are coming at it from different angles but it’s going to end up in the same place.

We are fucked, basically, because historically the only thing that makes people pull together again is a huge war or catastrophe

For full disclosure I see myself as fairly left wing/old school left wing. I’m horrified by what’s happening to labour, and I’m horrified by the alt right too.
There seem to be no centrist parties at all and common sense seems in short supply across the political spectrum.
It’s a mess

IMO, many people with neoliberal views imagine they are left wing. They aren't, but they are wrecking the left from within.
The Left has tolerated this, because change was needed, but they didn't have a clear vision of what that looked like. They've moved in the wrong direction away from class analysis into identity politics.

The alt right is the biggest threat to democracy we've seen in modern times.
UKIP is a palliative. Its not one that any left wing person would consider.

IMO, many people with neoliberal views imagine they are left wing. They aren't, but they are wrecking the left from within.

Yes. The current iteration of ID pol is a capitalist wet dream, serving up the population into nicely delineated market segments.

It also uses tactics from totalitarian systems including breaking bonds between us, making people suspicious of each other, and afraid to talk openly.

The left has been so compromised by Neocon policies that class no longer exists for them - unless it's Trans class - a ticket to nowhere on the train of the 1%

“The problem is that what the left has done with ID politics is actually fairly similar in end point to what people like the alt right are doing. So it sort of stops being about right vs left and starts becoming more about ... well I’m not sure to be honest. I’m a scientist not a politician/sociologist“

I agree. My understanding is that the alt right is very similar to the far left. The alt right are basically the national socialist fascists of old rebranded. I’ve noticed that the news media in this country however doesn’t actually understand what the alt right are and call people like the recently jailed activist ‘Tommy Robinson’ alt right or far right when he is clearly neither. This lack of understanding and the spreading of misinformation makes dealing with the real alt right threat more difficult. In America, Richard Spencer often called the leader of the US alt right is clear about what he wants, things like free national healthcare along with the abolishment of free speech and an all white ethnic state are some of his policies. It’s not a right wing capitalism vs socialism movement at all, it’s a racist and nationalistic one and the journalists clearly don’t seem to have done any research on it. The dividing line that it seems to be about is the supremacy of the group over the individual. Individual rights don’t matter to these people and individual rights is what they want to abolish. Fascism described an ideal society as like a bundle of sticks all fastened (the root of the word) tightly together being strong as bundle but weak individually or “all within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” A fascist said that but it could just have easily have been Stalin I guess? The only difference seems to be diversity. The far left welcome almost every type of diversity except diversity of though and diversity of opinion. The fascists want no diversity at all. But they look very similar to me.

I got through just the first section of this person's presentation.

He immediately said "they are trying to get rid of all of us white males"
Clue to the room.

Name dropped Jordan Peterson.

He complains about SJWs. They are not left wing for the most part.

His juxtaposition of "ideology" against "reality" in almost every example I would flip it and list it on the opposite side.
Right wing idology is as much an ideology as the left is. Also his progressive/ left points are quite wrong often.

He basically reiterates a lot of the right wing propaganda that enables certain people to maintain the status quo in a social environment enabling the exploitation of certain other people in the name of "individual choice" and "reality of life" while remaining completely ignorant of socioeconomic influences and class analysis.

But I didn't watch the rest.

I agree that the left has been infected by identity politics and has lost it's way, a lot of this is down to neoliberal ideology that bacame popular in the 90's which opened the way to the cult of the self and away from social conscious discourse.

It also uses tactics from totalitarian systems including breaking bonds between us, making people suspicious of each other, and afraid to talk openly.

Yes. Absolutely.

I dont think left vs right is a particularly useful way of looking at politics any more.

Id like to be able to look at a political movement or party and be able to ask:

What are you aiming for?
How will you achieve that?
Who/what will benefit/be harmed along the way?

And be morally OK with all the answers. Needless to say I feel rather politically homeless just now.

The speaker in the clip is clearly coming from a position I’d class as those alt right chaps - he’s saying he’s a white male and white males ‘should be on top.’
That attitude is what’s driving all of this - men who have traditionally been at the top not through ability but by simply being white men are now having to compete in a global pool. And there are an awful lot of very talented people in the world who are not white men.
This is the driving force behind MRAs, the vile incel crowd, stripping away women’s rights, attacks along race lines from the alt right etc etc. It’s all linked, and it plays alongside austerity to frighten people into their own little tribes, breaking societal cohesion on all levels.

Look at what’s happening in Europe. Mass immigration is used to have an ‘other’ to demonise. Austerity plus mass immigration makes people feel like they need to ‘protect their own’ so you’ve got effectively a siege mentality. Austerity strips public service and allows private alternatives to be offered, leading to corporate dominance of what should be state owned services run for the populace. Lower levels of public services drive lower levels of public trust
Whether it’s been set up that way or people are just acting like vultures off the back of it I don’t know, but it’s leading us to a situation where we have poverty, inequality, and an ‘other’ to blame. And we know what happened last time with that. This is driving society back to a sort of feudalist corporate nightmare.

I read the other day that US private contractors made at least 40bn from the Iraq conflict alone. Also that the UK only finished paying off the war debt from WW1 in 2014 and the debt from WW2 in 2006.

Follow the money and the power, always.

“The speaker in the clip is clearly coming from a position I’d class as those alt right chaps - he’s saying he’s a white male and white males ‘should be on top.’
That attitude is what’s driving all of this - men who have traditionally been at the top not through ability but by simply being white men are now having to compete in a global pool.”

Really, you heard that? I heard him arguing for a totally meritocratic system where gender, race, sexuality and other characteristics that people didn’t choose shouldn’t affect the outcome of anything. This is certainly the system I would like. He seemed to be saying that we don’t have this meritocratic system anymore and that having a system of protected groups, diversity targets and short lists to achieve a race/gender diversity balance is not working out as it’s proponents had expected and that the advocates of this would eventually have to fall back on liberal meritocratic principles. But I’m fascinated by the fact that we both listened to exactly the same video and yet we both seemed to ‘hear’ two very different messages. How can this possibly be so? :(

Incidentally, now that I think about it, I think this was what happened in the Kathy Newman with Jordan Peterson video. Jordan would say something and Kathy would respond with “so what you’re saying is...” like she had heard something entirely different from what it was that was actually said.

Because of what he’s saying. At the moment white men are still top of the tree so we NEED to make sure minorities, women etc are actively supported.

The GOAL of supporting women and minorities is to erase the differences over time. If you need affirmative type action it means there is a structural inequality in the system. You then legislate and society follows.

Meritocracy would be great - and it sounds great and reasonable, but if you got rid of all the laws and protections, all you’d get at the moment, in our unequal society is white men fucking over everyone else. Because the system is rigged towards them.

So what he says is ‘hey I’m so reasonable PC crap blah blah’ but what he means is that he wants the status quo to remain.

“If you need affirmative type action it means there is a structural inequality in the system.“

I don’t think I could really believe that. At least not completely. Because surely that would mean in the case of men and women for example, that the sexes were pretty much identical and that both groups would behave in exactly the same way if it were not for these structures? But doesn’t the evidence suggest men and women have different interests and tend to behave differently? Is the same structural inequality that causing 90% of the prison population to be male? Or is it because men are different from women and that one of those differences is that they are more likely to be aggressive and as a result tend to be the ones committing the sorts of crimes that tend to land a person in jail? Ironically enough the person speaking said in the clip a TRA called him a trans exclusionary feminist and he said that was ridiculous because he wasn’t a feminist at all. But it’s strange how different groups are seeing the same person, speech or event in entirely different ways. It’s almost like everyone is looking through the same things with a different set of reality distorting glasses on and I have to consider that this could apply to me too. :(

I heard him arguing for a totally meritocratic system... He seemed to be saying that we don’t have this meritocratic system anymore

We've never had this system. We live in a classest and sexist society that favours the wealthy and the males, even when we have leaned towards socialism.

To achieve a true meritocracy we need to first provide all born humans with equal access to education, health and resources. Otherwise all you are doing is propping up the already privileged who have access to these things so they can prove their "merit".

A true meritocracy would actually disadvantage white males as a class because other types of people would take positions of power/privilege based on their merit rather than standard discrimination.

The route to this is a socialist route so any one claiming to reject socialism with a big logo reading "socialism sucks" whilst claiming to support a meritocracy is suffering from thinking problems.

One of the most ridiculous points in this person's presentation was where they tried to argue against "Resources are finite" by saying "No they aren't, we all have Kindles, and wealth is created". Just... the classism... it's beyond reasoning with.

But doesn’t the evidence suggest men and women have different interests and tend to behave differently? Is the same structural inequality that causing 90% of the prison population to be male?

These are good questions and I think most feminists err on the side of; there are physiological reasons for this, but better socialisation conditions for males could help control these behaviours.
Men and women are clearly different physiologically but does this mean women aren't so good mentally in STEM subjects?

You're thinking from a biological determinist point of view.

Don’t look at what people say. Look at what they do (or here, what they want to do.)

Meritocratic society sounds fab. So how’s he going to do that?

Ah. he wants to abolish all the laws and processes that help other people compete with him on an even playing field. In the name of equality.

So what would that look like?

It looks like white men being captains of industry and screwing over everyone else. Business as usual.

Always ask what people will do to achieve their aims, what the consequences will be and who benefits. Because believe me, what this guy says he wants and what he actually is going for are as far apart as they could possibly be. When a member of the dominant class tells you that measures to increase the equality/access/etc of minority classes should be abolished, it doesn’t matter what reasons he tells you he’s doing it for - the outcome will be him, on top.

Is the same structural inequality that causing 90% of the prison population to be male?

That’s a combination of higher testosterone, larger physical strength and about twenty thousand years of being socialised to do whatever the fuck you want regardless. It’s a complex issue.

Lots of complex arguments going on here but
A) The Left had better not fall apart, because the Tories are ripping up the raisons d'etre of good government
B) I do hope you are all aware of the Political Compass idea of political ideologies mapped along two axes - redistributive or not, and libertarian or authoritarian?
C) Completely agree with the point about people imagining they are on the Left when they're not. My erstwhile friend who believes that women who disagree with letting men into the Ladies' should be beaten up could barely be more authoritarian, and hasn't said a peep on economic matters. But he has the bloody cheek to pride himself as a right-on lefty.

Those questions Bowlofbabelfish are brilliant!

What are you aiming for?
How will you achieve that?
Who/what will benefit/be harmed along the way?

I would add to them my other concerns:
How much force are you planning to apply to those that dissent? What will you do if shown evidence that goes against your dogma?

Because it's authoritarianism that really chills me to the bone, and at the moment I worry about left and right almost equally.

“It looks like white men being captains of industry and screwing over everyone else. Business as usual.“

White men do predominantly tend to be the ones at the top but they are also predominantly the ones at or near the bottom. More females than males go to university these days, young women under 30 earn more than young males as a result. I think the white working class tend to be one of the groups that do worst in higher education in the UK these days. One of the criticisms about gender quotas and positive discrimination has been that it’s about helping upper middle class women get to the top rather than helping those at the bottom. I’ve never really accepted that and believe the motivation is better than that. But that was the point of the talk I guess, universities are now going to have to discriminate in favour of white working class men as a disadvantaged group in higher education, the original advocates of these discriminatory policies aren’t going to like that and have to fall back on equality of opportunity liberal principles after decades of arguing for illiberal equality of outcome policies. I guess time will tell if he is right but it would seem that people here think not.

More females than males go to university these days, young women under 30 earn more than young males as a result

Then what happens?

1. The nature of biology means women are hit disproportionately by pregnancy and childbirth. Im pregnant with my second, I’ve needed to be signed off for several weeks at the start because I was vomiting up to fifty times a day. I now have childbirth, lactation and recovery from pregnancy and birth ahead of me. The first one floored me, I expect this to be similar. DH will surge ahead at work.

Friends have had serious complications with childbirth. One friend turned down a more senior role which involved a lot of travel because she is basically incontinent after her first birth. Biology directly impacts women, and it disadvantages us. And that’s with western medical care.

1. The structure of the world of work means that when women have children, they are predominantly the ones doing the parental leave, then men expect to be facilitated more at work (there is a great thread about this, I’ll put the link in another post.) so men surge ahead again because women are doing all the grunt work and allowing them to.

So that’s just biology. (Similar things happen with race and with poverty. I’m no expert on race, but I’ve seen poverty first hand and that is a massive disadvantage.)

And it is a societal structural problem. DH and I try to be as equal as we can. We are very equal parents but we feel the pressure from our work. When he takes a day for a sick child he’s a hero. If I take one I’m uncommitted. Why can’t he fly to Miami tomorrow for a meeting? Doesn’t he have a wife at home? Etc. Etc. It’s constant. If a couple as committed to equality as us feels it, I can be sure a lot of others do too.

society is set up to benefit men (and the rich, and white people.)

So al those women under thirty? Well they’re probably like I was before I had kids. Nothing opens your eyes to how much society is rigged against women like a direct encounter with your biology. That can be something nice, like having kids, or something awful, like gynae cancer, or being at the mercy of a larger, stronger Male, or rape.

But once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

Society is rigged. All those quotas are aimed at evening the field. Once the field is even and humans are advanced enough to not slide back to barbarity if they’re removed, we can remove them.

But we can’t remove them now.

This thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3082251-Men-whose-lives-are-facilitated-by-women-how-did-this-happen

I think it's more the right is collapsing, as much as I would like to think it's the left.

The Conservatives are in a huge mess and it can no longer be controlled via the media. They are the ones in Government after all. It's a shit storm of massive proportions.

So I wondered what feminists who are not onboard with trans agenda though, if the same conclusions are being reached by those with different political perspectives?

I think feminists understand we are the ball in the manly sport of politics when the discussion between the parties turns to to the dispute over how best to position the boot on women's neck. The men do not agree and the women are not consulted.

The Conservatives are in a huge mess and it can no longer be controlled via the media. They are the ones in Government after all. It's a shit storm of massive proportions.

The media are still massively covering up Tory issues. Look how little coverage Islamophobia in the Conservative Party has received, compared to anti Semitism in the Labour Party. Equally bad problems, yet one has a few limited reports and the other is droned on about for weeks.

OP, I can't take any woman that chooses to join UKIP seriously. There's no more white male centric party out there.