Struggling with my political allegiance now and it's really bothering me

[Appalonia]

Since the eighties, I have been a leftie, raised money for the Miners ' strike, was in the SWP for a while in the 90s, lifelong Guardian reader, worked for charities for most of my career. However, I'm so disillusioned with what the left has become now. It started as for many of us with the trans issue, seeing formally trusted and respected institutions like the BBC, the Guardian, C4 etc either ignore, or blatantly skew the issues, the only place I could read the truth about what was happening was on ' right wing' media outlets that I would have dismissed outright previously.

Since it was only right wing outlets or posters that were talking about this, pp like Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson, The Spectator etc, I feel like I've been exposed to right wing views that I now feel more more aligned to than left wing commentators like Owen Jones, Mark Steel, most comedians etc.

I now listen to Trigggernometry, Free Speech Nation The Lotus Eaters, and I'm starting to feel more aligned to them on other issues now, like free speech, immigration etc.

So, I'm thinking about the demonstration for free speech in London on 13 September in London and part of me really wants to go because I think it's really important and what's happened with the trans debate and how it's been reported in the press and how so many gender critical pp have been silenced. And it's not just about GC views, it's about free speech in general. But the people who are organising this, is really putting me off. I want to go and stand up for what I believe in but at the same time, this demo is being characterised as a ' far right' demonstration, and I don't want to be associated with that. In fact, years ago, I would have been on the other side, demonstrating against fascists.

I just can't disentangle it all in my mind, I believe in free speech and I do believe it's under threat in the UK, but at the same time I don't want to be associated with pp like Tommy Robinson. But even saying that, just watching his interview on Triggernometry was eye opening. Can anyone relate to this? I just feel so conflicted right now.

Sorry, I don't feel I've expressed myself very well, there's so much more th an this. I just can't square my identity of myself of a life long socialist with how much I disagree with so much of what the left stands for now, that I just don't agree with.

Perhaps if the police spent less time prancing around bedecked in rainbows during Pride Month, erroneously informing the public over Twitter that misgendering is a hate crime, or arresting and interrogating a disabled woman in Cardiff over "transphobic stickers" and holding her in the cells for a day while they search her house and remove feminist books from her shelves, they might have more resources to devote to arresting the fuckers openly inciting violence against women in broad daylight?

Perhaps the time they have very publicly spent on these kinds of non-priorities has led the general public to believe that they have more resources than they know what to do with?

I feel completely the same. I would still describe myself as “left wing” but really at a loss as to who I would vote for if they called a general election.

I am in Wales and we have Welsh government elections next year, I am seriously considering spoiling my ballot which I have never done before

Oh definitely. Thinking back to the old days when porn was illegal in the UK and quite hard to get hold of, I'd instinctively have been on the libertarian side. But I didn't foresee what an online porn-addicted culture would lead to. We've gone way beyond Linzi Drew and Miss Whiplash in the 1990s highlighting conservative hypocrisy.

I'd like to sit down with some of the libertarians of that period and get their reflections on how things have gone. Anyway, when I see lefty men these days waxing lyrical about how empowering porn and prostitution are, I make some assumptions about their lives.

This is going back a bit and may seem a tangent, but I used to be a huge fan of Dennis Potter, and part of that is that Dennis got into TV drama in that quite narrow window when the BBC were willing to hire bright grammar school boys from working class backgrounds.

But one thing about Dennis is that, however much grief Mary Whitehouse caused him, he loved the idea of Mary Whitehouse. He liked that there was this little old lady in the Midlands who was a voice for all the other little old ladies in unfashionable parts of the country with ducks on their walls, and who the hell was Sir Hugh Greene to sneer at them, even if he agreed in principle with Sir Hugh Greene. It was a class thing.

Labour and Conservative are now two cheeks of the same arse. Look elsewhere to place your vote.

Last night I heard a programme about the famous 12th Century Jewish philosopher Maimonides. I was very struck by something he said which is apt for this question:

You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes

(Not always easy!)

The Brexit vote was quite early on in the day - back in 2016. The whole lead up began even earlier than that, with the perception that British people were being controlled by Germany and lacked sovereignty even though Britain had a number of opt out clauses in terms of the Euro, Schengen etc.

Then when it was voted through hate crimes against immigrants spiked and it feels that since then, antipathy toward immigrants in general has just steadily grown. It started with the Polish and has moved on.

Anti immigrant feeling in Europe and elsewhere appears to have surged later, particularly after Covid though every country is different.
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A new book by Tom McTague (editor of New Statesman) argues the story goes back to Second World War, and traces Britain’s euro-ambivalence through all the debates that first took us in and then out agin. He thinks this is part of a longer story about history that isn’t finished yet. So Brexit wasn’t so much a cliff edge as an episode. I think that has a lot going for it as an argument.

Sometimes it's hard to know what the truth is so people tend to use a shorthand - if X is saying it then it must be true cos I agree with X on so much. It's probably some sort of primitive tribal survival thing at work. Otherwise we would be on high alert all the time.

I listen to people I disagree with on a lot and occasionally find I agree with them on something or they make me examine my thoughts on something but it can be exhausting.

I think try and know your values and look at things through that lens.

I feel you. I vote Green because while I may be GC, I see climate change as the biggest challenge facing us the next couple of decades.

Yes, I agree.

Even when you do have a pretty good sense of the truth though it can get interfered with by the source of some information regarding it.£5

For example, sometimes teenagers find it difficult to do something their parents say is ‘right’ even if they secretly think it is too. Then they cut off their nose to spite their face. Similarly if you more or less hate someone, the instinct is to refuse to listen to anything they say - even if they say, ‘The sky is blue’, and it is!

Does it not bother you that they've allowed themselves to become so distracted by identity politics and list focus on the environment though?

These days the main thing they seem to be focused on is virtue signalling.

I think try and know your values and look at things through that lens

I think many have lost any sense of a robust moral framework these days.

It's all just a very facile 'be kind' and responding to whatever cause is shouting the loudest and/or is the most fashionable.

I’d trace it back to the legal systems- the European mainland has a lot of Napoleonic based systems, whereas England and Wales is Common law based. All the opt outs and so on couldn’t hide that the UK and NI was just a really bad legal fit (and should probably have stuck with a Switzerland style arms length agreement).

Brexit was my realisation that I wasn’t a Guardian reader any more. There was a lot of hatred of the provincial working class. There was no understanding that just because the EU was working very well for the degree-class, it didn’t mean it was working for the provincial working class. It was all ‘it’s good for us, so it’s good for you, and if you don’t agree it’s because you’re thick’.

And then came the Gender Wars and it was ‘Nope, the Guardian has lost it. They’re not reporting reality any more. They’re reporting what they think reality should be.’

Louise Perry often says that gender ideology was transformative for her politically because she thought "if the left can be so wrong and so deranged on this one issue, how likely is it that they are right on everything else?"

I feel very similarly.

yes but a) GC people voting Green might dilute the madness a bit and b) I can't see anyone else taking the environment seriously at all. It is my absolute number 1 voting issue by far. It helps that I have a relatively sane local Green MP.

Apologies if this is already mentioned as can't read the whole thread this morning.

The way I see it is that

1. genuinely not all Tories are bastards (gasp!!). Many believe in similar core values, the difference is the route they conceive is necessary to get there. The reason I will never be a Tory isn't for tribal allegiances, it is because I fundamentally disagree with their economics and their stance on human behaviour.

2. whether by accident or design, there are real opportunities currently for the left to be weakened and divided. There are many players locally and globally who have a vested interest in that happening. Two of the ways the left are currently allowing themselves to submit to this are: by allowing the championing of free speech to belong to the right wing; by allowing the understanding of the physical and material reality of sex to belong to the right wing.

If you think about it the stance of some who self identify as left wing is absolutely ludicrous and not even logical. How can someone claim to be anti-fascist one moment and then work against free speech the next? How can someone (rightly) decry the murder of Palestinian journalists by Israel and then work to obscure the media reporting on the sex of violent offenders in the UK? How can someone criticise the lack of vital access to the internet in North Korea or Afghanistan and then work to prevent women speaking freely to each other in the UK?

TLDR it's great to consume stuff from all viewpoints. It's great to remain curious and questioning. But don't let other people's hypocrisy and logic deficiency put you off knowing what you know.

"this demo is being characterised as a ' far right' demonstration, and I don't want to be associated with that"

I no longer care about being associated with what people characterise. I know I'm not a horrible bigot for standing up for women's rights. Why should I care if someone calls me far right?

That’s not exactly logical!

Why not? The progressive worldview uses very similar ideological logic across several domains

• Everyone is equal
• Be kind and inclusive
• Lift up minority voices

Sounds lovely right?

But then you realise it's actually

• Close your eyes to noticeable and obvious differences that exist between categories of people (women/men)
• Sacrifice your own interests and comfort for the sake of people who demand entrance to your spaces, even if you feel unsafe (single-sex spaces)
• If you are a member of a majority group, you must never advocate for any of your own interests and you should be suspicious of those who do (cis people)

Once you realise this is insane, is it so hard to imagine the next step: realising you can replace what's in the brackets with, for example:

• Cultural values
• Large numbers of single migrant men
• British (English, ...) people

For someone who HASN'T gone trough that process, it looks like you're saying immigrants aren't equally human, we should be mean and exclude them, and we should deliberately crush minorities. But that's because you can't see how progressivism is not "just modern truth" but a motivated ideology like all the others.

Around the time of the 2016 referendum I was reading an interesting book called The Offshore Islanders, (focussing on England rather than the rest of the UK), in which the Synod of Whitby in 664 is mooted as the origin of Euro-scepticism. Ostensibly discussing how to date Easter, it was really about who was in charge of Christianity in Europe (Rome won). The result was an ingrained distrust and dislike of being told what to do by those in far-away cities on the continent. This author thought it made it easier than it should have been for Henry VIII's Reformation, as people liked the idea of a home-led church.

I wish there were more locally-focussed sensible independent candidates to vote for.

Of course it is - if someone tries to convince you that black is white, or that up is down, you would naturally question their ability to think critically about everything else.

The idea that men can become women or vice versa, is so absurdly ridiculous that the people who are peddling this can’t be trusted.

Yaxley Lennon and his ilk don't want freedom of speech. They don't want you to have the freedom to disagree with them. They want the right for things they agree with to be said without challenge. They want to be allowed to say whatever they please and face no consequences for it. If they had power they would not be championing free speech and upholding your right to it. If anyone genuinely believes that this bunch actually care about freedom of speech and want everyone to have equal rights to it then I have a lovely bridge to sell you.

No kidding. Louise, you can turn exactly the same observation back on the right, too. That’s what real liberalism actually is (as Helen Pluckrose keeps tirelessly pointing out) - rules of law and society that apply to all, not just to who the winners want to punish.

It's really hard for me to put into worlds how problematic the left's embrace of gender ideology has been.

Its anti everything it was supposed to stand for.

Anti science, anti women, anti children, anti safeguarding, anti transparency, anti legal clarity. I could go on.

You've conflated being more likely to be a victim of crime, being more likely to fear becoming a victim of crime, and being more likely to commit crime. The three are different things.

A poor person has less means to avoid criminals. They can't afford to take a taxi or bus and are at risk of mugging when walking. They are more likely to live in a rough area. A poor person subject to DV has less means to escape. The poorest women have to choose between being raped by a partner or sleeping on the streets because they have no means to afford a flat. All of this means that poor people are more likely to be the victims of crime and are more likely to fear crime.

You can't apply that reasoning to committing all types of crime. I'll grant that poverty makes someone more likely to steal. But there's no reason why poverty would make someone more likely to rape, because rape doesn't bring the rapist money or goods. We know from Saville and Epstein that rich men rape and will use their money to facilitate raping. Rich men have more resources to groom victims with gifts and pay them off afterwards. You've claimed a causal link between poverty and committing sexual offences and that causal link just isn't there.