4 ms·

Maybe, though in the last 100 years, at least in the West, the left was generally anti-racist, emancipatory and internationalist while the right was nationalist

Maybe, though in the last 100 years, at least in the West, the left was generally anti-racist, emancipatory and internationalist while the right was nationalist, sexist and racist. They're now switching on the racism+sexism thing in many Western countries with the left going for active racism and sexism (with role reversal) while the right (minus the far right, maybe) adapts more egalitarian policies. It's unclear how homogeneous the left is on these positions. It appears that we're now at a point where splits are happening in the left, at least in Europe, it looks more unified in the US (though I guess the typical argument is that there is no significant left in the US). The Nordic countries' left is now more right-wing on immigration and integration than central Europe's conservative parties -- it's going to be an interesting future.

aksss 6y ago
Well, there is the view that the “left” in America has always been the party of racism - in the mid 19th century the democrats were pro slavery, in the early 20th century they were promoting eugenics[1], in the mid 20th century it was the democrats that had to be cajoled/bribed/whipped to get the civil rights act passed, not the republicans. In the late 20th century, Thomas Sowell was making a pretty compelling case that the welfare state (advocated for by the left) was only serving to keep black society in the gutter, the Clintons were talking about “super-predators”, and the criticism of the “soft bigotry of low expectations” was leveled precisely at leftist policies. Today, it’s the democrats arguing for a new form of segregation (separate ceremonies for graduation, separate standards of success, painting things like hard work, self reliance, and the nuclear family as “white” values[0]). People like to promote the idea that the parties “switched” at some point in time, but looking at the history of the US since the civil war, it’s hard to see where that would have happened in any meaningful way. Seems like the same crap dressed up in whatever rhetoric is convenient, which at times is mind-numbingly contradictory. A lot of people with good intentions are taken in by it though. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/african-american-museum-site-removes-whiteness-chart-after-criticism-from-trump-jr-and-conservative-media/2020/07/17/4ef6e6f2-c831-11ea-8ffe-372be8d82298_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/african... [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/17/eugenics-skeleton-rattles-loudest-closet-left https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr...
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Well, there is the view that the “left” in America has always been the party of racism - in the mid 19th century the democrats were pro slavery, in the early 20th century they were promoting eugenics[1], in the mid 20th century it was the democrats that had to be cajoled/bribed/whipped to get the civil rights act passed, not the republicans the Democrats weren’t, even relatively between the two major parties, on the left, until the partisan realignment that started with the New Deal coalition (usually characterized as the US’s Fifth Party System) and hadn’t really completed before being overlayed with another realignment triggered by Johnson’s 1968 move on civil rights and completed around the mid-1990s (the US’s Sixth, and current, Party System). > People like to promote the idea that the parties “switched” at some point in time, but looking at the history of the US since the civil war, it’s hard to see where that would have happened in any meaningful way. On economic issues, its pretty easy to pin the starting point of the major shift to 1932, though obviously there had to be some lower-level shifts to enable that from-the-top shift. Before that, the Democrats and Republicans were both on average more to the right than the post-1932 Democrats, and neither was clearly right-or-left of each other (they both had fairly broad left-right spans, which remained true for some time after the realignment started; they were more regional and less left-right ideological splits.) On race, in the same way, its very easy to clearly pinpoint 1968 as the pivotal moment. (And just look over history at which major parties rallies are most likely to see people proudly waving symbols of the confederacy, or which party has intellectuals arguing that American slavery was good for Blacks, or which party is actively imposing voting restrictions with the overt intention of reducing Black turnout, and which parties presidential candidates have been actually endorsed by the KKK, and the idea that the parties have not switched on this is revealed as ludicrous.) Also important is that (unloke the temporary split of the Dixiecrats previously), the Republicans actively exploited disaffection among White racists from the Democrats after 1968, appealing to them and flipping them over time to supporting Republicans. This was an actual reversal, not the adoption of a new axis of differentiation, and is directly thr cause of why the South flipped from solidly Democratic to become solidly Republican, except where inroads in black voting later weakened that. For both, the final major wave of shifts of members-in-government-office that can be viewed as essentially completing the realignment occurred just after the 1994 midterm elections.

aksss 6y ago

Well, there is the view that the “left” in America has always been the party of racism - in the mid 19th century the democrats were pro slavery, in the early 20th century they were promoting eugenics[1], in the mid 20th century it was the democrats that had to be cajoled/bribed/whipped to get the civil rights act passed, not the republicans. In the late 20th century, Thomas Sowell was making a pretty compelling case that the welfare state (advocated for by the left) was only serving to keep black society in the gutter, the Clintons were talking about “super-predators”, and the criticism of the “soft bigotry of low expectations” was leveled precisely at leftist policies. Today, it’s the democrats arguing for a new form of segregation (separate ceremonies for graduation, separate standards of success, painting things like hard work, self reliance, and the nuclear family as “white” values[0]). People like to promote the idea that the parties “switched” at some point in time, but looking at the history of the US since the civil war, it’s hard to see where that would have happened in any meaningful way. Seems like the same crap dressed up in whatever rhetoric is convenient, which at times is mind-numbingly contradictory. A lot of people with good intentions are taken in by it though. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/african-american-museum-site-removes-whiteness-chart-after-criticism-from-trump-jr-and-conservative-media/2020/07/17/4ef6e6f2-c831-11ea-8ffe-372be8d82298_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/african... [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/17/eugenics-skeleton-rattles-loudest-closet-left https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr...

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Well, there is the view that the “left” in America has always been the party of racism - in the mid 19th century the democrats were pro slavery, in the early 20th century they were promoting eugenics[1], in the mid 20th century it was the democrats that had to be cajoled/bribed/whipped to get the civil rights act passed, not the republicans the Democrats weren’t, even relatively between the two major parties, on the left, until the partisan realignment that started with the New Deal coalition (usually characterized as the US’s Fifth Party System) and hadn’t really completed before being overlayed with another realignment triggered by Johnson’s 1968 move on civil rights and completed around the mid-1990s (the US’s Sixth, and current, Party System). > People like to promote the idea that the parties “switched” at some point in time, but looking at the history of the US since the civil war, it’s hard to see where that would have happened in any meaningful way. On economic issues, its pretty easy to pin the starting point of the major shift to 1932, though obviously there had to be some lower-level shifts to enable that from-the-top shift. Before that, the Democrats and Republicans were both on average more to the right than the post-1932 Democrats, and neither was clearly right-or-left of each other (they both had fairly broad left-right spans, which remained true for some time after the realignment started; they were more regional and less left-right ideological splits.) On race, in the same way, its very easy to clearly pinpoint 1968 as the pivotal moment. (And just look over history at which major parties rallies are most likely to see people proudly waving symbols of the confederacy, or which party has intellectuals arguing that American slavery was good for Blacks, or which party is actively imposing voting restrictions with the overt intention of reducing Black turnout, and which parties presidential candidates have been actually endorsed by the KKK, and the idea that the parties have not switched on this is revealed as ludicrous.) Also important is that (unloke the temporary split of the Dixiecrats previously), the Republicans actively exploited disaffection among White racists from the Democrats after 1968, appealing to them and flipping them over time to supporting Republicans. This was an actual reversal, not the adoption of a new axis of differentiation, and is directly thr cause of why the South flipped from solidly Democratic to become solidly Republican, except where inroads in black voting later weakened that. For both, the final major wave of shifts of members-in-government-office that can be viewed as essentially completing the realignment occurred just after the 1994 midterm elections.