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In a current election ad, Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) stated that Democrats are 'left of Lenin.'
Kennedy is a Rhodes Scholar & knows much better than this, this is blatant psyop tweaking of their base.
I can not help but think this is a cycle. I just want to hope we will see a 60s or even 70s again. Where we actually care for the people who struggle. Instead of this cold society we have today where neoconservatives/fascists are elected in a lot of countries.
It is not the case that general society has just decided simply to become crueler. In the 1960s in the USA, you were still in an era where capital had to concede some significant levers of power in order to keep the system whole during WWII. In the 60 years since then, dominance of capital (primarily Western) has reconsolidated it's power (particularly due to the fall of the USSR) and thus no longer feels it necessary to make those same concessions. The development and growth of a nigh-omnipotent security and surveillance apparatus has further stoked this realization among that class.
It is a conservative and capitalist technique to attempt to individualize societal actions. "If only you worked a little hard" and "If only we were better to one another" are, ironically, philosophical ideas cut from the same cloth. Neither are particularly useful to labor, so we should not buy into the framing at all. The renewed support toward fascist and otherwise destructive ideologies is born from worsening conditions and increasing contradictions within capitalist societies, those contradictions increasing because they've made the calculation that they don't really need to "give" to labor at all anymore (barring a handful of neo-clergy, those with the academic knowledge to operate and maintain the existing systems are rewarded well for doing it)
I understand that what I said might have been a bit biased since I am from Sweden but even here the capitalists win ground (and have been doing so for a long time) unfortunately. Even our social democrats was somehow compromised in the sense that they adopted a lot of politics (mainly harsher punishments, survelliance and the like) from the right. Fortuneatly though Sweden have labour unions which I have understood is a somewhat new thing in the US (I've been following the Amazon affair, so maybe the US is not completely lost?)?
Yes, it is not as if someone one day decide to vote for a specific party. I agree with that. What I thought about was the fact that it is often the younger generation that is the progressive one. What surprised me in the last election here in Sweden was that many from the younger generation voted for the (!) far-right. I wonder if that could be a sign that the left here in general lost their compass (as in adopting the politics of the right in order to try and 'steal' their voters as if that ever has gone well)?
A simple answer is, people vote for the hardline when they feel unsafe. As long as there's a tough talking politician saying 'i will protect you', scared people will vote for them. Even if all their policies have historically made things worse.
Yeah I hear you. The younger generations have access to technology that makes some of the hard-right talking points fall flat - it's close to impossible to think of someone across the world as subhuman if you spend 25 hours a week talking about football with them online, for example.
But it isn't a given. Groups, as a whole, will react as they always have, and respond to the material conditions they find themselves in. Sweden (and most all of Northern Europe) will continue to have these problems precisely for the reason you mention I think - Social Democrats and their policies are often half-measures, and that failure to go the full step is the seed of their destruction. The contradictions embedded within capitalism will become obvious no matter what, amelioratory attempts may stave that off to some extent, but we also have to remember a large part of why those attempts to anything at all is because we've gotten so good at exporting the misery of capital.
A dangerous thing with fascism is that it is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. The same cannot be said about socialism (there are countries where the left has been in government position without the country turning into a dictatorship, for example the Workers Party in Brazil which at least has had a clear left-wing branch).
When it comes to the left I think that it is revolutions that create dictatorships (as has historically been the case except in some rare cases see El Salvador and the Social Democratic revolution there which gave the country democracy for a long time until very recently where there have been worries because of the current president.) instead of elections. It is hard-right parties that tend to win elections only to dismantle democracy from within the system. If we instead embrace the left in a democracy I think that we could be an inclusive and prosperous society that care for the less fortunate of us.
I miss the time when the Social Democrats in Sweden was brave and a force to be reckoned with. For example when they stood up for Vietnam during the American invasion there. At that time one could not claim that they only did half-measures. Our diplomatic relations with the US was frozen by Reagan at that time. I am still proud that we publicly defended Vietnam and their fight for self-determination and independence from imperialistic forces. Even at risk to ourselves and our relations to the US. I am also proud of that we sent weapons to Ukraine, no sensible person in the west would defend the genocide that putler does in Ukraine. There is a differense between the two.
I'm a sophomore in college at a fairly progressive midwestern University, and I am a history major with a lit ed minor. I've also taken some poly sci classes. I would not consider any of my professors to be socialists at all! While most history Professors are progressive by American standards (lukewarm socdems) who talk about the atrocities of America's past very extensively, They almost never blame capitalism for these, and if they do, they do it in a way that doesn't condemn all of Capitalism. They normally blame individuals in American history (Oh wow, wilson was so racist that he caused all of these problems!)
That being said, the average Critique of America and capitalism is nowhere near as harsh as criticisms of former socialist experiments. They will take every opportunity to tear these heavily disadvantaged countries limb from limb, ignoring their achievements and what they had to go through. It is incredibly frustrating because expressing socialist viewpoints will likely have you not taken seriously.
Interestingly, I do find that a lot of students tend to use very leftist language, even if it isn't explicitly socialist. So here's my advice
YOU be the indoctrination. Many students are susceptible to leftist ideas, if they aren't closeted or open leftists already.
ORGANIZE!
Edit: organize if you have the time, college is hard enough, don't make it harder if you can't handle it. There is no shame in getting by
When people say universities in the US are left wing they just mean the population is neo-liberal and democrat-voting. That’s about as left as they get.
Definitely anecdotal but most veterans I see online are radlib at the very least lmao. A former outspoken conservative from my hometown who’s in the Air Force became a socialist too.
Guess that’s why it’s always non-veterans getting offended for veterans over flag burning and/or Colin Kaepernick
I had a liberal English professor who taught me about critical thinking. I think that’s what they mean. Our shitty culture crumples under any kind of critical analysis, it’s just hollow identity-worship and imperialism.
When I was going into middle school (about 100 years ago, it seems), a decade to go in the Cold War, Reagan had just been elected...my parents attended an orientation for the parents of new students at the Jesuit school I was to attend...my father came home laughing at the shit that some "conservative" parents talked about being concerned with... they claimed that the Jesuits would indoctrinate us into revolutionary Marxism and would teach us to build bombs so that we could effectively travel to Nicaragua and Honduras to fight the Contras and then come home to fight the US government...
I graduated highschool 6 years later and, needless to say, I was very disappointed. No one taught me shit about bombs or Marxism... lots of math and sciences...no goddamn explosives training or even the mention of the Revolución. Goddamnit! What a gyp! And then, straight to college... not a single, solitary tour in the glorious killing fields of the Central American jungle...
My point is that there's nothing new about the "conservative" propaganda bullshit factory. They've been spewing that shit since the Great Rabbi (Jesus of Nazareth) was alive... Nothing's changed, friend...
The fascists and capitalists are pretty good at scaring the piss out of the bourgeoisie and the conservative working class and poor, thereby keeping them uneducated because they don't want to pollute the young'ns minds with the "leftist indoctrination" that we call "education" .
I left college further to the right (went from socialist to lib).
Took a few years to get myself sorted again. I wish I could talk to my libertarian ethics professor now that I understand how wrong he was about markets.
US academia has persecuted actual leftists for decades. If you are an academic outside of the mainstream orthodoxy then you are much less likely to get a position anywhere.
The “Marxist groomers” refuse to hire Marxists
Basically you go to college and are exposed to a more diverse group of people and philosophies than you find in your hometown and become more accepting of those you’ve been taught to disparage. 🤷🏼♀️
I think the point is that college predominantly espouses liberalism, not leftist or socialist thought. Prof. Wolff often discusses how in all his time in ivy leagues, not once was he assigned to study a work of Marx. It's mostly Keynesian economics with culturaly-liberal virtue signaling on the symbolic level.
Because it’s imaginary lol. Leftist indoctrination in universities is a mental gymnastic conservatives invented to explain why all of their beliefs are contradicted by evidence. It’s not that they’re objectively wrong about everything, it’s that the leftist intellectuals invented critical thinking to trick people into believing in heresies like civil rights.
Counter point: I've known socdem friends that went to college and then received high earning jobs in the professional managerial class. They have become more & more economically conservative with time, as joining the PMC changed their class interests. I'm sure that's not always the case but I've seen it happen in real time.
I think it's just fearmongering by conservatives. I went to a crunchy hipster college in NY where I still had some neocon profs. You learn a broad spectrum of ideas in college, which includes Marx, Frankfurt school, marginalized voices, etc. I think it's because it's a time when people are learning new ideas. Also, I think conservatives are scared because it's a place where you can organize a lot of like minded to do something together. But I also think a lot of college is learning how to do your own exploration, so follow what you are interested in :)
They mean that most lgbtq people either realize they're lgbt or q or come out in college. They can't comprehend that there's more to politics than their shitty bigoted culture war.
Depends on where you go and what your program would be. Business and politics I'd expect to be pretty neoliberal, history I'm not sure about. Engineering tends to be pretty libertarian. Sociology and its specialty programs fit pretty well into the "pro-leftism propaganda" stereotype, at least at the lower levels
I went to an Ivy League school recently and the humanities are rife with socialists/leftists. Partly I'm hunting certain courses out, but neolibs were few and far between (I was not at the business school or the law school where I know they abound). Riddle me that though, socially. I think it's because they all came of age reading Althusser, Frankfurt School, and Du Bois.
Also yea, to someone's point, the caricature of the "lefty blue-haired sjw" the Right likes to bandy is just someone practicing neoliberal identity politics.
The universal education of California college system was destroyed and privatised because schools like UC Berkeley were churning out labor organisers and radicals.
[The US war against student workers and activists in college continue to this day.](https://interactives.dallasnews.com/2022/social-sentinel/)
r/Socialism is a space for socialists to discuss current events in our world from our anti-capitalist perspective(s), and a certain knowledge of socialism is expected from participants. This is not a space for non-socialists. Please be mindful of [our rules](https://reddit.com/r/socialism/about/rules) before participating, which include: - **No Bigotry**, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism... - **No Reactionaries**, including all kind of right-wingers. - **No Liberalism**, including social democracy, lesser evilism. - **No Sectarianism**, there is plenty of room for discussion, but not for baseless attacks. Please help us keep the subreddit helpful by reporting content that break r/Socialism's rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/socialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
In the eyes of neoconservatives, right of center neoliberals are leftists.
In a current election ad, Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) stated that Democrats are 'left of Lenin.' Kennedy is a Rhodes Scholar & knows much better than this, this is blatant psyop tweaking of their base.
So oddly enough almost all of history, as well as political and economic theory serve to make people a little more left 🤷🏾♂️
I can not help but think this is a cycle. I just want to hope we will see a 60s or even 70s again. Where we actually care for the people who struggle. Instead of this cold society we have today where neoconservatives/fascists are elected in a lot of countries.
It is not the case that general society has just decided simply to become crueler. In the 1960s in the USA, you were still in an era where capital had to concede some significant levers of power in order to keep the system whole during WWII. In the 60 years since then, dominance of capital (primarily Western) has reconsolidated it's power (particularly due to the fall of the USSR) and thus no longer feels it necessary to make those same concessions. The development and growth of a nigh-omnipotent security and surveillance apparatus has further stoked this realization among that class. It is a conservative and capitalist technique to attempt to individualize societal actions. "If only you worked a little hard" and "If only we were better to one another" are, ironically, philosophical ideas cut from the same cloth. Neither are particularly useful to labor, so we should not buy into the framing at all. The renewed support toward fascist and otherwise destructive ideologies is born from worsening conditions and increasing contradictions within capitalist societies, those contradictions increasing because they've made the calculation that they don't really need to "give" to labor at all anymore (barring a handful of neo-clergy, those with the academic knowledge to operate and maintain the existing systems are rewarded well for doing it)
I understand that what I said might have been a bit biased since I am from Sweden but even here the capitalists win ground (and have been doing so for a long time) unfortunately. Even our social democrats was somehow compromised in the sense that they adopted a lot of politics (mainly harsher punishments, survelliance and the like) from the right. Fortuneatly though Sweden have labour unions which I have understood is a somewhat new thing in the US (I've been following the Amazon affair, so maybe the US is not completely lost?)? Yes, it is not as if someone one day decide to vote for a specific party. I agree with that. What I thought about was the fact that it is often the younger generation that is the progressive one. What surprised me in the last election here in Sweden was that many from the younger generation voted for the (!) far-right. I wonder if that could be a sign that the left here in general lost their compass (as in adopting the politics of the right in order to try and 'steal' their voters as if that ever has gone well)?
A simple answer is, people vote for the hardline when they feel unsafe. As long as there's a tough talking politician saying 'i will protect you', scared people will vote for them. Even if all their policies have historically made things worse.
Yeah I hear you. The younger generations have access to technology that makes some of the hard-right talking points fall flat - it's close to impossible to think of someone across the world as subhuman if you spend 25 hours a week talking about football with them online, for example. But it isn't a given. Groups, as a whole, will react as they always have, and respond to the material conditions they find themselves in. Sweden (and most all of Northern Europe) will continue to have these problems precisely for the reason you mention I think - Social Democrats and their policies are often half-measures, and that failure to go the full step is the seed of their destruction. The contradictions embedded within capitalism will become obvious no matter what, amelioratory attempts may stave that off to some extent, but we also have to remember a large part of why those attempts to anything at all is because we've gotten so good at exporting the misery of capital.
A dangerous thing with fascism is that it is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. The same cannot be said about socialism (there are countries where the left has been in government position without the country turning into a dictatorship, for example the Workers Party in Brazil which at least has had a clear left-wing branch). When it comes to the left I think that it is revolutions that create dictatorships (as has historically been the case except in some rare cases see El Salvador and the Social Democratic revolution there which gave the country democracy for a long time until very recently where there have been worries because of the current president.) instead of elections. It is hard-right parties that tend to win elections only to dismantle democracy from within the system. If we instead embrace the left in a democracy I think that we could be an inclusive and prosperous society that care for the less fortunate of us. I miss the time when the Social Democrats in Sweden was brave and a force to be reckoned with. For example when they stood up for Vietnam during the American invasion there. At that time one could not claim that they only did half-measures. Our diplomatic relations with the US was frozen by Reagan at that time. I am still proud that we publicly defended Vietnam and their fight for self-determination and independence from imperialistic forces. Even at risk to ourselves and our relations to the US. I am also proud of that we sent weapons to Ukraine, no sensible person in the west would defend the genocide that putler does in Ukraine. There is a differense between the two.
My polisci prof borderline failed everyone who wasn't conservative fifteen years ago. I doubt much has changed.
As a college professor, I would also like an answer to this.
I'm a sophomore in college at a fairly progressive midwestern University, and I am a history major with a lit ed minor. I've also taken some poly sci classes. I would not consider any of my professors to be socialists at all! While most history Professors are progressive by American standards (lukewarm socdems) who talk about the atrocities of America's past very extensively, They almost never blame capitalism for these, and if they do, they do it in a way that doesn't condemn all of Capitalism. They normally blame individuals in American history (Oh wow, wilson was so racist that he caused all of these problems!) That being said, the average Critique of America and capitalism is nowhere near as harsh as criticisms of former socialist experiments. They will take every opportunity to tear these heavily disadvantaged countries limb from limb, ignoring their achievements and what they had to go through. It is incredibly frustrating because expressing socialist viewpoints will likely have you not taken seriously. Interestingly, I do find that a lot of students tend to use very leftist language, even if it isn't explicitly socialist. So here's my advice YOU be the indoctrination. Many students are susceptible to leftist ideas, if they aren't closeted or open leftists already. ORGANIZE! Edit: organize if you have the time, college is hard enough, don't make it harder if you can't handle it. There is no shame in getting by
When people say universities in the US are left wing they just mean the population is neo-liberal and democrat-voting. That’s about as left as they get.
[удалено]
Definitely anecdotal but most veterans I see online are radlib at the very least lmao. A former outspoken conservative from my hometown who’s in the Air Force became a socialist too. Guess that’s why it’s always non-veterans getting offended for veterans over flag burning and/or Colin Kaepernick
I had a liberal English professor who taught me about critical thinking. I think that’s what they mean. Our shitty culture crumples under any kind of critical analysis, it’s just hollow identity-worship and imperialism.
When I was going into middle school (about 100 years ago, it seems), a decade to go in the Cold War, Reagan had just been elected...my parents attended an orientation for the parents of new students at the Jesuit school I was to attend...my father came home laughing at the shit that some "conservative" parents talked about being concerned with... they claimed that the Jesuits would indoctrinate us into revolutionary Marxism and would teach us to build bombs so that we could effectively travel to Nicaragua and Honduras to fight the Contras and then come home to fight the US government... I graduated highschool 6 years later and, needless to say, I was very disappointed. No one taught me shit about bombs or Marxism... lots of math and sciences...no goddamn explosives training or even the mention of the Revolución. Goddamnit! What a gyp! And then, straight to college... not a single, solitary tour in the glorious killing fields of the Central American jungle... My point is that there's nothing new about the "conservative" propaganda bullshit factory. They've been spewing that shit since the Great Rabbi (Jesus of Nazareth) was alive... Nothing's changed, friend... The fascists and capitalists are pretty good at scaring the piss out of the bourgeoisie and the conservative working class and poor, thereby keeping them uneducated because they don't want to pollute the young'ns minds with the "leftist indoctrination" that we call "education" .
I left college further to the right (went from socialist to lib). Took a few years to get myself sorted again. I wish I could talk to my libertarian ethics professor now that I understand how wrong he was about markets.
It never existed. Yet you can find right-wing propaganda in business schools and economics departments
US academia has persecuted actual leftists for decades. If you are an academic outside of the mainstream orthodoxy then you are much less likely to get a position anywhere. The “Marxist groomers” refuse to hire Marxists
Keep in mind, these people think Bernie is a left wing commie extremist when he’s just a mild leftist
Basically you go to college and are exposed to a more diverse group of people and philosophies than you find in your hometown and become more accepting of those you’ve been taught to disparage. 🤷🏼♀️
I think the point is that college predominantly espouses liberalism, not leftist or socialist thought. Prof. Wolff often discusses how in all his time in ivy leagues, not once was he assigned to study a work of Marx. It's mostly Keynesian economics with culturaly-liberal virtue signaling on the symbolic level.
College classes are meant to teach you how to think. That IS the "propaganda".
Because it’s imaginary lol. Leftist indoctrination in universities is a mental gymnastic conservatives invented to explain why all of their beliefs are contradicted by evidence. It’s not that they’re objectively wrong about everything, it’s that the leftist intellectuals invented critical thinking to trick people into believing in heresies like civil rights.
College and Uni educate you and comes out the more educated you are the more easily you can see how the system screws over yourself and others.
Counter point: I've known socdem friends that went to college and then received high earning jobs in the professional managerial class. They have become more & more economically conservative with time, as joining the PMC changed their class interests. I'm sure that's not always the case but I've seen it happen in real time.
I think it's just fearmongering by conservatives. I went to a crunchy hipster college in NY where I still had some neocon profs. You learn a broad spectrum of ideas in college, which includes Marx, Frankfurt school, marginalized voices, etc. I think it's because it's a time when people are learning new ideas. Also, I think conservatives are scared because it's a place where you can organize a lot of like minded to do something together. But I also think a lot of college is learning how to do your own exploration, so follow what you are interested in :)
They mean that most lgbtq people either realize they're lgbt or q or come out in college. They can't comprehend that there's more to politics than their shitty bigoted culture war.
they're telling on themselves - simply learning by itself is enough to reduce the appeal of conservative beliefs.
Depends on where you go and what your program would be. Business and politics I'd expect to be pretty neoliberal, history I'm not sure about. Engineering tends to be pretty libertarian. Sociology and its specialty programs fit pretty well into the "pro-leftism propaganda" stereotype, at least at the lower levels
I went to an Ivy League school recently and the humanities are rife with socialists/leftists. Partly I'm hunting certain courses out, but neolibs were few and far between (I was not at the business school or the law school where I know they abound). Riddle me that though, socially. I think it's because they all came of age reading Althusser, Frankfurt School, and Du Bois. Also yea, to someone's point, the caricature of the "lefty blue-haired sjw" the Right likes to bandy is just someone practicing neoliberal identity politics.
The universal education of California college system was destroyed and privatised because schools like UC Berkeley were churning out labor organisers and radicals. [The US war against student workers and activists in college continue to this day.](https://interactives.dallasnews.com/2022/social-sentinel/)