this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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Honestly, many of these posts aren't even "right-wing" views, they're just shared positions like "guns are empowering to civilians", "have some respect for cultures you're entering and learn to communicate", "people raising a child should be supported", "child abusers should be removed from society".
The framing of some of these as "right-wing" or "anti-left" due to progressivist liberals is harmful and something we have to punch through. In my union, I had to put on a nice face and discuss with a member who only knew how to frame their legitimate proletarian objections to offshoring and porky's cost-cutting through terms like "woke nonsense", "diversity" and the like. And it sucks for them too, because their unfortunate, inaccurate choice of words lumps them in with absolute scum, and so they have to justify every other sentence with a good ol' "I'm not a racist" to try and clarify their objection (which, in this case, based on their other views and talking to them further, I really think was true and not just the classic shield tactic that Nazi scum abuse to feign humanity). When progressive liberals have garbage analysis and advocate idealist misguided solutions, that alienates reasonable people who might end up believing themselves to be "anti-left", given the Overton window puts proglibs in the "left" here.
I can only imagine if they talked to someone else who took their language at face value and then (understandably) dismissed them as an anti-worker pro-bigotry bastard etc. etc., instead of realizing it's just (for lack of a more neutral word) ignorance. Their legitimate proletarian concerns would be answered with dismissal or an attack. That's why we need to say loudly and clearly that we have shared proletarian values, not just "leftist" values.
(daily reminder that "left-right" is a nonsense subjective category anyway)
Well said. This really gets to the heart of it. I forget where I heard this quote but "the culture war is a proxy class war" is something I feel has a lot of truth to it.
Great phrase, I'll have to remember that one! And that's absolutely at play here from the "progressive" liberalist side too - I suspect a significant chunk of the frustration with "DEI" and "woke" is due to the capitalist abuse the underlying progressive movements, comparable to rainbow capitalism. Offshoring (I originally miswrote that as "outsourcing" before you replied) to cheap underqualified labor is justified as "diversity", but local workers suffer because the capitalist is hiring people who aren't doing the job as well. The capitalist is justifying their anti-worker exploitation as being social justice! So for people who are brought up in a casually racist environment [read: most citizens here] and just not used to thinking about how they say things, they can thoughtlessly say something that's easily misinterpreted as racist bigotry. Consider: "They keep giving our jobs to Indians who can't do it as well" - it absolutely comes off as racist (or nationalist) to me, but could also just be someone who seriously doesn't care about whether they're from India or a different race, they're objecting to the outsourcing which just happens to currently be to India. Thoughlessness, which leads them to have to justify with defenses: "I'm not a racist, the Indian coworkers over here are wonderful, I have an Asian wife", you get the idea. Again, I know those lines are also abused by dissonant racists, but we would be foolish to just assume.
The person I was talking about before had earlier complained that they were also getting in trouble at work for being direct and blunt, rather than diplomatic and polite, like if someone was talking loudly on their phone while others are trying to work, or they didn't put enough greetings and sugar in their email and someone got offended. And they mentioned that it wasn't easy for them to adjust, because they'd been conditioned in certain engineering and military [fuck the troops] jobs where you don't have time to formulate and beat about the bush or worry about politics, direct and timely communication matters, and I suspect that leads them toward this thoughtless unfortunate phrasing, forcing them to backtrack with those defenses; "they can't say anything anymore". And, yes, again, that's the same line we also see used by pieces of crap who want to say racist garbage. It's all so tiresome!
yeah definitely. I think a those of us who have beliefs we've taken the time to think through choose our words carefully, we assume others do the same. in reality most working people haven't, they just regurgitate things they've heard on TV, Facebook and other corporate platforms. the silver lining is that our ideas are not as unpopular as they might appear. you really don't know until you find a common language with someone what you really disagree on.