I keep hearing people say that the far-left is significantly less organised, more fragmented than the far-right. Why is that? (And to be clear: I’m asking about the far-left, not just the left in general (though they may be linked)
Is it though? At least here in the Netherlands, the far right is not much better. There’s constant infighting, egos tripping over each other, new “messiahs” taking over and crashing down. We have JA21 and van Haga who both split off of the FvD when the mask went fully off. We have groep Markuszower who split off of the PVV. And on top of that parties like the BBB and people like Mona Keijzer who try to claim the spotlight. The originally liberal VVD trying to get a piece of the pie.
I’m happy for it though. Much rather this than an organized right.
But yeah, leftists can definitely be a purity contest sometimes.
At least here in the Netherlands, the far right is not much better
That doesn’t mean necessarily that the far left isn’t disorganised, only that the far right is as disorganised. If the far right is likewise disorganised over there, it doesn’t mean the far left isn’t, only that they’re both disorganised.
As for the rest of your comment, I’m afraid I’m not sure of who most of them people/groups are, though that’s purely because I’m from the Netherlands and don’t have knowledge of how your government works. But I’ll be sure to look into your country, it sounds like it could be interesting to see the disorganisation on both sides of the political spectrum.
The far right only have to organise around a handful of simplistic ideas. They talk in tabloid headlines. Smear shit and hope the millionaire fash send money your way. It’s as easy as flipping hamburgers.
The left have to deal with the complexities of reality. They need to talk with stakeholders and learn from specialists in a given subject at a given time. They are limited by language that can express the complexity of our societies and what makes them run well.
I’m not saying that’s the full explanation, but it’s inherently harder to organise something more complex and creative. It’s easier to organise a dirty protest.
The far right is funded by deep pockets and is not attacked by the establishment Republicans.
If the Democratic Party establishment would see the left as an asset rather than a threat then things might change.
Well, that’s the thing about the Democratic Party. They actually aren’t left of center. They are performatively left on a few social issues when it’s convenient.
The Democratic Party is at left as it can be without touching underlying capitalist structure, which is to say, it is not properly left at all.
I agree with this, and it’s why movements like OWS and BLM have more or less done nothing. Those are complex concepts with lists of things that need to be done. The right has “Lower taxes” and “Let us be racist”. The left though has nuanced concepts and new things that people have never heard of. People hear “Lower taxes” and know what that means. Universal healthcare is new and complex, and so the right reduces it to something they understand, “higher taxes” and other fearmongering. Meanwhile we’re trying to show amortization rates of providing care to everyone and the right has simple phrases.
Rinse and repeat for everything. We tried “Defund police” but the right only heard “No more police” because there is a lot of nuance to “defund police”, like demilitarizing and focusing on sending in people who can actually help. “Climate change” is a complex nuanced subject that takes a long time to understand, but the right reduces it to “They want to take away your truck”.
Gay marriage I think worked because it was a very simple message, allow gays to marry. They tried to reduce it however they could but in that case their arguments were the harder ones to follow. I think we need to think about how we describe things, and try to avoid from the beginning needing to explain concept subjects to (I’m sorry but) simple people. Universal healthcare should simply mean “We run a government level insurance program, like all of the other countries, so no one gets denied coverage”. Or something like that.
“No more police” is a pretty simple idea that seems to have slipped by you so idk
“No more police” is an idealistic concept that would never make it out of committee and is routinely used by the right to “prove” to themselves that we can’t be taken seriously. “Demilitarized police” instead is a concept that could be actually implemented, and could get support from both the people and politicians and could actually be implemented.
If you seriously believe that we could pivot next year to “no more police” then you’re deluding yourself, there’s no politician in this entire country who would stake their career on that. Nice to dream, but no way in reality it would ever happen, and using it only fuels the right.
I’m not looking for a politician to take anything seriously. I am looking for we the people to remake this godforsaken place, and that means implementing our goals directly, which includes dismantling every police station and sheriff’s office.
Seriously the police are kidnapping people at random and you still don’t get that the system is broken?
I’m not so unreasonable to assume that no one who is currently wearing a badge and gun can rehabilitate themselves into productive members of society, but the systems that they work as a part of need shut the fuck down.
ICE is not the police, and I can’t believe I have to state that.
The fraternal order of police supports ICE.
It depends on the place, many cities and states have rules that prevent local police from helping ICE. I’m not saying that police don’t need reform because I think that’s what the whole ‘defund the police’ movement is really about, but to say that all police support ICE is inaccurate - otherwise sanctuary cities simply wouldn’t be allowed to exist. Now, there aren’t nearly as many sanctuary cities as I’d like - and more states would do well to follow the example of states like Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, etc.
That’s another topic entirely, though.
ICE is a natural evolution of the way American police have operated for decades now. It’s wild that people don’t see that. They didn’t just appear from nowhere.
Are they worse than police? Arguably yes, but they didn’t just appear spontaneously from nowhere. Our failure to reign in the police and force them to obey the law led directly to the behavior we now see from ICE. We’ve let the white supremacists run wild and refine their techniques for a long time now.
Is this the “left infighting” that i hear about
When you go far enough left and right on the spectrum they become indiscernible.
As others mentioned, ICE are not police.
On top of that again it’s idealism vs realism. Yes idealism is what it could be, but the system isn’t changing anytime soon. I’m sorry, but it’s not. Unless the majority of people suddenly mobilize, but I’ve been waiting now 30 years and at multiple points thought maybe they finally would, but it’s not happening. Once you realize that it’s idealism, then you can move into realistic options.
I’m not looking for a politician to take anything seriously. I am looking for we the people to remake this godforsaken place,
And this is why those movements fail.
They only need to convince like 200 million people to their specific ideals, piece of cake.
I was at a Moral Mondays protest in Raleigh NC a while back and someone with a bullhorn called out “What do we want?!”
And the crowd yelled back, all at once:
“Racial justice!”
“Marriage equality!”
“Immigration reform!”
“Police reform!”
“Impeach Trump!”
“Close Guantanamo!”
“Better pay for teachers!”
…and a bunch of other demands too many to understand in a crowd that large, and while I knew I was with the right people, I had a sinking feeling about our chances of achieving much of anything.
That sounds like an exceptionally unplanned rally, or the wrong person had the bullhorn. But we have to start somewhere so well done all.
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Caring about things like “facts” and “not hurting people” is a real drag.
that’s the funniest thing i’ve read in a while
Organization takes time and money. Two things the far left are generally not conducinve to concentrating to the point where they can build effective political and economic campaigns.
It will take moments of political and economic crisis to mobilize against this current. If and when it does, no one will be happy about it regardless of the direction chosen.
The far right is like ICE. Anybody is welcome. Far left is not like that.
Kind of ironic given the right are the ones always trying to close borders, etc.
And persecute LGBTQ+.
The far right is like ICE. Anybody is welcome.
I guess “anybody” doesn’t include immigrants or LGBTQ+.
Lack of money; lack of charismatic central leadership.
Occupy Wallstreet tried to be cute with the mic check thing but needed an MLK like figure.
Doesn’t help that large money from the right is willing to play dirty and continuously drive wedges and stoke division.
The right/left divide has a lot of definitions but the one it feels right to apply here is the oldest one. Right wants to maintain and reinforce existent hierachies. Left wants to change them. Now, notice that there is an extremely well defined goal for the right, to maintain and reinforce the thing we all can see right in front if us. The left on the other hand, doesn’t have a defined, unified goal state. Someone can be ‘left’ and want to bring down their current government in favour of an entirely different, maybe even more powerful and centralised state, or they can be ‘left’ and want to eliminate the idea of any person or group having authority over any other person or group. To use more modern examples, ‘tankies’ and ‘anarcho-primitivists’ are both ‘leftist’ insofar as they both agree the systems of places in the global ‘west’ should end, despite how little they agree on what should happen after.
Gotta say, not that others explanations aren’t good too, but I think yours is, so far, the most clear cut explanation
Having done a lot of it myself, people become activists because they get off on it somehow. Abstract morality just isn’t very motivating, and the work sucks. Quite often they just like conflict, and are as likely to fight each other as capitalism/The Man/globalist woke Jews/whatever. There’s things specific to the left as well, but this is true across the board.
Fringe activism, where there’s nobody motivated by money and career instead, tends to be even worse.
This all says not-great things about humanity.
Probably because most of us are neurodivergent.
I’ve tried to explain concepts to people. People don’t kniw they are racist. People don’t underatand why the shouldn’t use Facebook or Google. People don’t understand that trans people are not turning kids gay. I’ve tried to explain the horrors coming from privacy loss for 15 years.
Nobody listens. I’m tired boss.
From where I stand it seems that it’s because those people have no mutual aspirations - just mutual enemies. The group is not held together by a shared common goal but a shared enemy.
I can’t tell if you think this applies to the left or right.
Both. The far left and the far right have more in common with eachother than with the people in the middle.
The whole principle of right wing thought is strict vertical hierarchies. For their moral flaws, strict vertical hierarchies are a pretty efficient way to organize the average person. The whole principle of left wing thought is flattened, distributed hierarchies. For their moral virtues, decentralized flat hierarchies are pretty slow to organize. It’s a lot simpler to fall in behind an authority figure than participate in never ending sub-sub-subcommittees.
It’s hard to unify around a course of action when your whole thing is incorporating diverse perspectives and rejecting centralization. I’m not saying it’s not the right thing to do, it is, but it presents inherent challenges.
In other words, taking differing opinions into account and building things is hard. Deferring to what a “superior” is telling you is easy.
The blind believe in 1 strong man at the top and a clear strict hierarchy are key ideas within far right ideology. It’s easier to organise the right, but it’s also easier for the right to en masse follow the crazy dumb ideas of that leader. Left organising from grassroots up is a lot harder, but in theory better.
extremist positions are disorganized, period.
the reason why they are is because extremism in general is an emotional reaction to the inability to see progress.
for example, far-left people are typically vegan out of an emotional sense of responsibility to animals. while far-right people are generally carnivorous out of an emotional sense of spite towards far-left vegans.
similar patterns begin to show up with other topics such as abortion rights, and socialist benefit programs.
this is why extremism of any kind is toxic. it hinders our ability to govern based on merit instead of frivolous emotional weights.
though, that’s not to say that centrist views are any better since centrism is itself another form of extremism.
inflexibility is the death of all governments, that’s why there are judges that provide perspective to law and how it is applied.
Highly organized movements usually have a strong leader/organizer with clear decision trees. Right wing politics like that approach. Left wingers tend to prefer concensus decision making, inclusion, open debate, and flinch from anyone who tries to assert total control. As a result, in spite of having wider coalitions and really great ideas, leftist movements often lack that command and control infrastructure we tend to associate with the term “well organized”.
I think it’s a pretty big misconception of the far right is organized. They like to sell you on that notion. But if you look at it not really. They’re full of in fighting and backstabbing and competition as much as anybody.
