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Too often, ideological movements devolve into tribalism. If you align with one, you have to be vigilant that your motives don't make that shift.

• philwelch 8y ago
  Most ideological movements are tribalism. "Their tribe is oppressing our tribe, so down with their tribe!" is a good summary of most leftist ideologies, whether those centered around class, gender, or ethnicity.
  • beaconstudios 8y ago
    Also true of far right ideologies like Nazism and racial supremacy. Generally speaking, identity politics are tribal because they're about identity.
    • philwelch 8y ago
      Racial supremacism and Nazism are based around identity and tribalism, but the notions of oppression and victimhood aren't as central. Nazism in particular doesn't have the leftist narrative of overthrowing oppression in general; it was very explicit about the "strong" (Germanics) dominating the "weak" (Jews and Slavs).
      • fhood 8y ago
        The Nazi party built a great deal of its support on the argument that the wealthy Jews were oppressing the "pure" germans.
        • philwelch 8y ago
          Yes, but they didn't exactly equivocate about the idea that oppression was bad regardless of who was oppressing whom. They didn't try and guilt Jews into not "oppressing" them; they spurred Germans into a deep hatred of the Jews that would persist independent of any situational influences.
      • wsy 8y ago
        True, there is some interesting mindbending going on: it's not directly "they are suppressing us". It's "they are on the way of suppressing us, you see the first signs already, and here are their world dominion plans. Instead we should be suppressing them, because we are supreme". You see a similar pattern towards the muslim world today.
  • lotyrin 8y ago
    If you had left out "leftist" here you could have made a point instead of serving as your own example.
    • fein 8y ago
      You could try explaining why you think that way instead of going for some snide remark. I agree with him, you don't see this dynamic on the conservative side of things with anywhere near the same zealotry as the left. Leftists have turned purity spiraling into a competitive sport, which has turned into a snake eating it's own tail. The winner of the oppression olympics is still a loser overall.
      • fhood 8y ago
        Actually you do. "The liberals own the media and the universities, and they are all out to get us, and take away the things we love", is a pretty common narrative. Everybody wants to claim that they are the oppressed group.
      • lotyrin 8y ago
        There absolutely is tribal zealotry on the conservative side -- any side of any issue. Just not this specific shape or color or flavor of it that happens to stand out as an example because one tribe is seen to do something that another tribe is not seen as doing. People generally don't act with sufficient intent and information, don't have great theory of mind for large groups, have a hard time with large figures and probability, so most of any kind of political meme (traditional meaning here) - concept, movement -- will devolve to a tribal version of itself once you get more than a handful of people involved in it due to regression to the mean. Instead of "do I think this or that policy is likely to have a good or bad impact upon this or that situation" which requires some deliberate steps and psychological self-mastery you get "does my tribe prescribe this or that policy regardless of the situation" easy because it's automatic, an involuntary knee-jerk. This is why politics discussions are frequently fruitless -- while you can form rational arguments and negotiate consensus about policies and their utility, you can't do so with identity. Painting others (or even oneself) with labels like "leftist" seems to only perpetuate that problem, and it seems that a strawman is a strawman even if most of the population and therefore most of any group above a certain size happens to be made of said straw. I think we should be careful to point to specific people or at least specific groups, specific events or actions, specific policies as applied in specific situations and determine the value of those and that statements like "<general class> does ..." or "<general class> doesn't..." is insufficiently precise to demonstrate we aren't falling into the tribalism trap. It's so easy to use tribalism to false-generalize that even when we know a generalization is correct I think we should avoid using it because it promotes the use of those generalizations which may not be. Specifically in this thread I think we are all concerned about a set of groups who hold as truth a broad generalization that all privileged classes act as oppressors regardless of any individual's actions or intents. That's certainly a concerning concept, and I have specific examples of problems that it has caused, but I don't think "most leftist ideologies" subscribe to this concept -- nor that even if they did, I don't think it is useful to generalize about it in that way because I'd like to extend to the ideologies that do not subscribe to that the same benefit of the doubt that I hope they'd give me as a member of several privileged classes.
  • _bxg1 8y ago
    All movements have both kinds of members. Usually the movement professes a universal ideal that works for everybody. Usually there's a portion of its members who actually hold to that higher principle. Usually there are also members who use that as cover to wage banal social warfare. There will always be people who suck. All you can do is try not to be one of them.
• deleted 8y ago
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