Do you ever wonder, what else have I been horribly wrong on all this time?

[JaneorEleven]

Do you ever wonder, what else have I been horribly wrong on all this time? If I was SO wrong on those that are GC, what else have I been wrong on?

All my life I’ve been solidly left leaning, and pretty much agreed with most points on the left. I’ve described myself as an old fashioned socialist, love the idea of the NHS, a safety net for lower income people and unemployed, social and economic equality, disability rights, rights for women all tied up with feminism including being pro-choice, LGB and the TQ etc rights, you name it, I supported it.

I had previously been very sympathetic to Trans issues, and had a friend who transitioned, and I supported this person as best I could. But after some time of researching and I guess educating myself for lack of a better expression, I did a complete uturn on this, and found myself agreeing with many wise GC women. It was a bell I couldn’t unring. And Mumsnet played a large part in this.

I’m British now living in the US, and find myself busy Terfing USA. I’ve listened to NPR for years, nodding along, but now almost daily, they have a segment that infuriates me with regards to Trans issues. Could be anything from “trans kids” not getting their meds, to prisons, to bathrooms, schools, and they support it all. Female reporters who I held in high esteem, interviewing and fawning over transwomen, platforming them and letting them hold court without challenging them.

These past few weeks, I’ve started to question myself. How could I have been so wrong on this? I thought GC peeps, or Terfs, were full of hate and lacked patience and understanding.

Which leads me to ask, on what else have I been so badly wrong? Anyone else think like this? Now I don’t think I’m a closet right winger, but is it possible I’ve allowed the left to lead me up the garden path on other issues too?

I think we are not being taught to challenge or to apply critical thinking within our families, friendships and at school / uni or work.

Absolutely not. To an extent this is understandable - much of teaching requires teaching children how to behave obediently in a group. I think there's sometimes moves to try and encourage children to be inquisitive, creative, and free-minded but it's perhaps impossible to do so when the entire structure of a school is by necessity run on a model of confining and controlling behaviour.

@Abitofalark I think it comes down to parenting. Treating your children as equals, before they are adults, it’s not healthy. Of course there will be a give and take, should listen, apologise when wrong at any age, but I think many parents don’t put many or any boundaries in place.

as a contrast, I know a lot of Indian parents, and also adults without children. Worked with many in the last 20 years and I see respect from adults for their elderly parents, I see well behaved children (most of the times obviously), I see deep bonds of love between them.

i don’t see the same respect between British children and their parents, I see love, but lots of children being spoiled. A child without boundaries is not going to end up well. Ofc there are different “shades” to it, from extremes to less.

indian children are taught respect to their parents as a thing, I think they are told this, and parents show their hurt at being disrespected, I’ve seen this myself. That makes a small child pause and think what they are doing. Without this they will think it’s ok and it will only go worse.

my daughter (3 at that time) shouted at me once when I did something that displeased her (can’t remember what) that “you’re not my best friend anymore”. And I told her, yes, I’m not your best friend, I’m your mummy and you need to listen to me. I saw she was amazed at the concept :)) but she took it to heart, well, most of the time. She hasn’t threatened me with not being her best friend anymore. And setting boundaries is an on going thing.

The so called western world is definitely going fascism way, I hope the battle is not lost, but I’m not sure. At least it’s not the whole world.

The so called western world is definitely going fascism way, I hope the battle is not lost, but I’m not sure. At least it’s not the whole world.

Just to pick up on this.

At school in the 90s we had a generation taught that the nazis were evil. They were the baddies. I don't think that's changed.

Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall we had also had awareness that the Stasi and the Communists in the USSR weren't that nice. But since it fell, I don't believe there is the same level of understanding of how totalitarianism on the left is as problematic as on the right. It just isn't taught to the same degree.

If anything Vietnam taught about how the Americans were nasty to the Vietnamese (which they were) but no real discussion of communism itself. And as for China? Well that's a big black hole in education really.

Thats why you have the 'trendy left' with the likes of Ash Sakar blathering on about communism as if its a nice thing (whilst simultaneously giving a definitive of communism which is actually extreme neo-liberal individualism and capitalism which is mind blowing) and then the like of Jeremy Corbyn saying 'Russia isn't that bad' for years even into the Oligarch era and post 2014 invasion.

Because there is a complete lack of understanding of the difference between authoritarianism (and totalitarianism) and liberalism.

Liberalism does just survive. Its extremely fragile. It needs to be nurtured and understood. You need to know the principles of what underpins it. You need to know how human rights work. You need to understand that changing hearts and minds is a lengthy process without shortcuts which perhaps is particularly hard to grasp for generation instant. Changing hearts and minds relies on time consuming and resource heavy consensus building. Unless you go for authoritarian measures - which usually target education.

In this sense I do think a great many people took their eye off the ball whilst others saw an opportunity to force their agendas without much scrutiny or accountability. It was allowed due to the idea that everyone was nice and had everyone else's best intentions at heart. Cos that's what the left believe...

Its a moral superiority complex that arrogantly lost sight of liberalism and the need for balance.

The referendum really laid bare for me how poor as a nation our understanding of Rights and their fragility. We've seen a rise in the concept of 'rights' on a selective basis based on hierarchical status in society. Yet rights paradoxically are supposed to be most needed for those with low status and lack of political representation - not those with the biggest voice and most lobbying clout. And the public has bought into this PR push on the concept of 'Rights for the worthy' across the political spectrum because they were never properly taught the principles of liberalism. They just haven't taken things at face value because it aligned with a certain emotional response they had to a particular political issue (be it immigration or be it trans rights for example). The same thing has happened.

The ref was a good opportunity to revive a point about underpinning values and actually hope but the decision was made to focus on fear and attack politics because they thought it was connect better and more quickly.

Indeed one of the reasons Corbyn did so well in 2017 was because he had an excellent campaign of positive politics and gave something to vote for in an emotional way rather than one about voting against something.

After years of depressing people responded to a positive message because the timing was right. Emotional voting tends to dominate over rational voting and liberalism is built on rationalism which needs a lengthy time to instill into people's thinking.

Sorry I'm starting to ramble now so I think I'll just park this post here.

RedToothBrush, Sadly, rationality is in short supply. I voted to leave the EU for much of what you said, it was rights for the worthy and rights for those with the power to lobby. This may not be obvious until you see the interplay between freedom of movement, the right of establishment and the right of unions to protect their workers. The rights of unions was often put aside in favour of the two freedoms: of movement of labour (so an employer can employ ready-trained or cheap labour instead of training locally and paying the local going rate) and freedom of establishment, which has been allowed to undercut union representation to keep wages and conditions just and also has been a way to strip out manufacturing from e.g. the UK to benefit other countries the EC/EU wished to promote. I don't disagree with helping other nations but not to the detriment of ones's own since this is not likely to increase anyone's prosperity and will negate aid to others.

Education is needed about liberalism, but liberalism is also not all good. Some aspects e.g. the imposition of trans ideas, does not help society and may inflict damage on large parts of society which are nonetheless vulnerable, such as women who have much less power than men and who are in danger of losing much worked for rights in the name of male empowerment. Liberal is not always right, sometimes conserving what is good is right, generally expressed as not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I am particularly unhappy with the liberal view that democracy is not always the correct way to go - epitomized by the LibDems saying they would disregard the result of a referendum that said the UK should not stay in the EU - and also with the technocratic government - ignoring the will/wish of the people - which the EU goes in for. Doing to people what you think is good for them is just as tyrannical as doing to them what is bad for them.

I just think we have really lost the core, and got very wound up in neo liberalism and hitching onto ideologies which looked glossy and progressive, alongside a weird inability to tackle any voices of debate.

JK Rowling is what woke me up (excuse the pun!) to the insidious but dangerous aggressive bullying that is now the norm for getting liberal ideologies to be taken on board without question. She still has not said anything in my view that is so awful - and yet so many ‘liberal’ nice people are prepared to support those who are bullying and piling on hate - which I found profoundly shocking.

How did so many organisations, the NHS, the police, government, even human rights organisations take on board, so quickly, without question trans ideology? I think it was mainly emotional blackmail and bullying, the sort that said if you don’t take this on board right now, in the way that ‘we’ say, you will cause untold suffering of trans gender people. It has the fervour of a cult, and now ‘gender’ is presented as if it is an actual fact. How did this happen?

We have lost what it is to be liberal, to be decent, respectful and have integrity. We have lost those core values and instead hitch ourselves onto tick boxes instead. I think we have lost this in family set ups, in workplaces and in education. Core values are the key, not ideologies which generally have a dark side especially if taken to extreme (see communism for a classic example).

@RedToothBrush i agree

@Grammarnut i was anti Brexit at the time, but I’ve came to the same conclusion as you since. I was also one of those who argued against democracy and how to reverse Brexit. Probably for a year or 2 after. Now I wonder why. How could I think that when I’m anti totalitarianism, pro democracy? I think it’s bc the left always think they know best. And I thought the same at the time…

@CherryBlossomWinter “How did so many organisations, the NHS, the police, government, even human rights organisations take on board, so quickly, without question trans ideology? I think it was mainly emotional blackmail and bullying, the sort that said if you don’t take this on board right now, in the way that ‘we’ say, you will cause untold suffering of trans gender people. It has the fervour of a cult, and now ‘gender’ is presented as if it is an actual fact. How did this happen?”

the emotional blackmail is one of the reasons.

it also happened bc here people are too polite to say what they think in case they upset someone + it has been drummed into them that the British were so evil in the past (the empire etc) ( same for USA/Canada ) that they should be extra sensitive, apologetic, etc. while it started with a good intention it has quickly become a way to stifle free speech. This is across the board, not just for trans issues.

I've been saying on MN for a long time now that the trans stuff and the attitude of the LDs to Brexit are not actually liberal.

Thats kind of my point.

The meaning of the word has been high jacked to mean a certain set of prescribed values - that's authoritarianism. Whereas liberalism as it was understood isn't actually about set values as such but the principles of consensus and balancing needs of various different groups.

Identity politics absolutely isn't liberal. It creates an alternative hierarchy systems. Hierarchical systems are by nature authoritarian.

I've said this before but I call this a 'Liberal Identity' which is exclusive and completely separate to liberalism.

The two are not the same and the conflation is one of these hijacking of language things to further ideology.

Again positively authoritarian thing in nature.

I'm only on p3 but want to say how wonderful MN can be for platforming such thorough discussion and suggestion for further material to muse upon. Absolutely agree with the idea that I'll never have all the answers. Unfortunately it seems like we're expected to. I find it interesting (just an emerging thought) that in other areas- sport, learning an instrument, developing an eye for literary criticism, whatever - we accept that we're at the beginning and will always be learning, debating, to-and-fro-ing with others who have their own areas of skill and expertise, and we accept that we can't know everything, and yet we think we do on the topics that are urgent and affecting, or painted so. I think I've realised I need to keep my mouth shut and accept I know nothing, even when there's pressure to 'speak out' - there's always more to come, and we never have access to the full picture. I don't have to have an opinion on everything and it's alright not to know everything. Bursting out of the cake too soon with declarations has never been the right move for me.

RedToothBrush - I agree entirely. As a current member of the Labour Party I despair of them, too. The left has this halo of being right and it frequently - esp lately - is not. Leaves me nowhere to go.

Grammarnut, Interesting what you were saying about the unions and the EU. It reminded me that at the time of the referendum campaign Mick Lynch of the RMT, currently the figure of the hard man we associate with train strikes, was an advocate for leaving. He was one of the few on the left.

I say this again and again. In the past, it was common for Labour Party supporters to be anti-EU. It was a recognized, maybe majority perspective on the left.

And to a large extent when you dig into it, that's about the question of how a nation-state can function to serve the good of the people who are citizens, which is the primary function of the nation-state.

Nation-states working together for mutual benefit has always happened and institutions can facilitate that, but as soon as you are creating a situation where nation-states may not be able to act for the best interests of their own citizens, you have a problem.

@MangyInseam if only they’d be working together for mutual benefit… remember when they stole PPE from each other during the covid pandemic?! Stopped and stole trucks with PPE meant for another EU country. I remember several did this, but not which ones.

I just read this and thought it was interesting:

'Ruth Benedict, the anthropologist, tried to figure out why some cultures are good (to use her word) and some cultures are not good. In a good culture, men treat women well, adults treat children well, people are generally happy, and there's not a lot of competition. She found that the good cultures all have one thing in common. They figured out something very simple: they recognize that humans are both social creatures and selfish, and they merge selfishness and altruism by praising behaviors that benefit the group as a whole and disallowing behaviors that benefit the individual at the expense of the group. The bad cultures socially reward behavior that benefits the individual at the expense of the group.
This culture rewards highly acquisitive, psychopathological behavior, and that is the behavior we see.'

(from 'deep green resistance' )

Cultures like that can do some pretty extreme things in the name of the good of the group, though. I'd be interested to know how that fits into the idea of "good" and "bad".

Yeah that stuff was crazy.

But personally, I think the EU, to work long term, will have to become more like a nation itself. Otherwise the tensions of each state trying to serve their own interests will end up making it unworkable.

I think today’s gender identity politics is a hyper capitalist, solipsistic men’s sexual access to women and children campaign, rocket fuelled by social media. It’s an instinctive reaction based in overt or internalised misogyny in its supporters. It’s a reaction against the gains in power or freedom that some women have made in the past few decades, which is why it’s happening across supposedly free democracies etc. Remember that any loss of access to privilege can feel like repression.

And don’t ignore that gender identity politics is also supported by ALL of the major parties (in the UK at least) apart from the communists who never went down that road. The communists are about as left wing as you can get.

So It’s clearly not just a ‘left wing’ vs ‘right wing’ problem, OP, and if we try to tackle it that way this culture war will go on even longer.

Maya Forstater and Keira Bell (crowdfunded by many people on this board) have done far more for women’s legal rights on this issue at the moment than ANY politician in the UK has. JKR the same, on prompting the public discussion of this issue. They were unaffiliated to any political party.

So I’d be very wary of switching your political allegiances to any party that can’t point to its own strong track record of manifesto policies that are supporting both appropriate safeguarding for women and children, and free speech for all. No UK political parry is doing that at the moment.

As was the late Bob Crow.

I have very conflicting feelings about Brexit. I know, for example, that the freedom of movement of people was a sop to the European left back in the day, who were severely alarmed by the consequences of the freedom of movement of capital.

Notice how absolutely no-one ever spoke or speaks about that principle. Ever. Yet freedom of movement of capital is the one that supercharged late 20th century capitalism and partially got us into the unholy economic mess we are now in.

Indeed, arguing for freedom of movement of people across Europe in response to serious concerns over freedom of capital has to be the most economically right-wing position I have ever come across. It is "get on your bike" writ large over 3.9 million square miles. Even Tebbit would have thought that ridiculous.

And I deeply feel that the freedom of movement principle was never intended to benefit the ordinary Brit right from the start. If we had had governments that wanted the EU to work for the British people, then instruction in a number of the major European foreign languages would have been implemented at primary school level, as they are in other European countries.

In short, we would have a society where pretty much everyone born since 1979 would speak, at least, one European language, in addition to their mother tongue of English. And to those that believe this is a big ask; historically, the British have been polyglots. We were known for it during the Tudor period. There's no reason for us to be so monolingual at all.

I think what is being pushed for heavily is the concept of the "post-nation state." I've been reading some interesting ideas recently about how corporations are actually implementing forms of authoritarianism in western societies, but no one is notices because the social, cultural and economic changes they have achieved are not by state dictat. As societies, we have been programmed to see authoritarianism as a function of a repressive state or government, not companies, charities, or some other form of legal non-governmental body.

Of course, on this board, we do see it because we have examined the main players that are pushing gender identity ideology. But then that poses the question: what else is happening out there that is similar that we just don't see?

With all this in mind, I often find myself giving a nod to the old Marxists in their 70s who rail that everything is a rightwing nightmare - because, to be honest, they are right. This doesn't mean I'm some sort of communist though. It means I recognise that a lot of anarcho-capitalist demands are being driven through western societies under the cover of the "left", and the "left" is letting them do it because they have been blinded by a fear of "isms".

How did so many organisations, the NHS, the police, government, even human rights organisations take on board, so quickly, without question trans ideology?

As well as some of the other reasons given, it's because it hasn't been quickly. I used to be staggered by how stupid, unquestioning and intellectually un-curious the leaders of our institutions have been, to have taken on this ideology so full of holes and contradictions, which can be knocked down so easily. i thought they must know this stuff is bollocks but they're too cowardly and irresponsible to stand up for what's right. Would have been Mitlaufer in 1933 etc.

But recently I've been watching videos by this guy James Lindsay, who did that Grievance studies paper where he and his colleague came up with preposterous ideas related to critical race theory, which they thought would be rejected by academics in peer review and not only was the paper welcomed, the academics came back to say that they hadn't gone far enough and should be madder.

He's got lots of lectures on YouTube, that's a link to one of them I haven't listened to yet, but basically his argument is that all this Critical Social Justice stuff (CRT, trans-ideology, decolonisation, identitarianism etc.) has been going on for years, starging as part of the 70s - 80s marxist revivalism (I now understand why this term "cultural marxism" which I previously thought nonsensical) is used and that the teaching colleges have been indoctrinating students in this stuff and it's now worked its way through so that its believers are now in positions of power. It's not that it's a sudden conversion, it's that they now have enough critical mass to feel they can show their hand in a way they couldn't before.

It all sounds a bit tin hat, but i do actually think that the alternative explanation is that the cadre of leaders we have is utterly cowardly, stupid and over-promoted.

Possibly a bit of both...

If you've never changed your mind about something them there is something wrong with you. I never thought I'd vote Tory to protect women's rights but here we have landed.

I am right wing, but heavens no you won’t be wrong on everything. The left serves a
very important role in giving voice to people who have less power and agency.

In fact in my view a healthy society requires women and men of good conscience to advocate the respective left/right wing positions on debates.

I agree this baddies vs goodies angle of political discourse is reductive, divisive and just plain wrong most of the time. Both sides have their heroes and villains.

I feel deeply conflicted on the trans issue myself. I generally like to advocate a live and let live position. However the misgivings people have I understand. What seems to be the biggest problem is male violence towards women, girls, and even trans people. If we tackled THAT a great many things would fall into place, but we just don’t address it enough as a society.

Torunette

Yes, and ultimately what you see is that the state and these non-state actors work in concert. And the fact that multi-national corporations can control more funds than many nations makes the power dynamic quite different than just business. It's possible to have non-state bodies, or state bodies take the lead, depending on what is more palatable and effective at a particular place and time.

Though I do think that the take-over of the Labour Party by the professional middle classes is also a significant cover for the problems of movement of labour. They see Brexit as a significant curtailment of their ability to go work in a professional position, or their kids to go to university, on the continent. Because they have the kinds of jobs and educations where that is desirable and make the kind of money where they can still fly home to see family regularly. But that's not the reality of freedom of labour for the working classes and never was.

It makes me wonder a little to what extent that change was intentional.

Yes, his long march of the institutions analysis is spot on, I think.

@RedToothBrush
Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall we had also had awareness that the Stasi and the Communists in the USSR weren't that nice. But since it fell, I don't believe there is the same level of understanding of how totalitarianism on the left is as problematic as on the right. It just isn't taught to the same degree.

I 100% agree. I've read widely on communism, down to the level of the odd memoir by a communist leader, and apparently it's okay to lie and deceive in pursuit of The Revolution. It's okay to run Gulags and kill the opposition before holding 'a free election'.

Certainly this feeling that 'the Left is good' is very widespread in academia. I heard one aging Marxist make the argument that criticising communist China about e.g. Mao's famine was a mean thing to do, because they were following a utopian dream and that was the important thing (not the millions of dead).

Certainly this feeling that 'the Left is good' is very widespread in academia. I heard one aging Marxist make the argument that criticising communist China about e.g. Mao's famine was a mean thing to do, because they were following a utopian dream and that was the important thing (not the millions of dead).

Yes and this isn’t new. I remember as an Orwell-loving teenager, so nearly 40 years ago pre the fall of the Berlin Wall, being baffled at lefties I knew refusing to hear a word said against east Germany or Cuba, because they were left-wing and therefore ideal utopias. I’m not saying communism is always all bad either, I’m sure it’s complicated, but it’s not as if we didn’t know they could be violent oppressive regimes, yet some left-wingers wouldn’t countenance that. It blew my mind, that people would so determinedly prioritise ideology over the facts staring them in the face. Think I’m a bit older and wiser now…