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I don't think the left thinks of privilege solely as racial or gender privilege. Here's an article on "everydayfeminism.com" about the broad view progressives t

I don't think the left thinks of privilege solely as racial or gender privilege. Here's an article on "everydayfeminism.com" about the broad view progressives take on it: https://everydayfeminism.com/2014/05/income-vs-wealth/ https://everydayfeminism.com/2014/05/income-vs-wealth/

dragonwriter 5y ago
> I don't think the left thinks of privilege solely as racial or gender privilege. The left doesn't thing of privilege as even primarily racial or gender privilege. (The people that do are centrists; the actual left centers class privilege, though there are leftists who see race/gender issues as important secondary/connected issues to class issues.)
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  You have it exactly backwards. Centrists center class privilege while leftists center race/gender/etc privilege. For example, when discussing racial inequality, leftists will tend to argue “disparity thus discrimination” while centrists (and moderates of all stripes, really) will argue that the mechanism is classist but it manifests as a disparity because the class distributions aren’t uniform across races. I certainly agree that historically leftists were very concerned about class, but that hasn’t been the popular analysis among American leftists for a decade.
  - camgunz 5y ago
    Eh, I think he's right. On the ground, the "centrists" are mostly the Clinton/Obama wing of the party who are very fluent in identity issues and the "leftists" are mostly the Sanders wing of the party who are more focused on economics. Maybe ironically, as one of them I wouldn't say "centrists" center anything. We tend to see the whole thing as a milieu. Not that economic issues aren't super important, but there's no serious way to analyze the US without taking both economic and identity issues into account.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Agreed that centrists (or more precisely, "moderate Democrats") are more aligned to Clinton/Obama wing, but the idea that Clinton/Obama are the identitarians rather than the progressive wing (Warren, AOC, Pressley, Tlaib, Omar, etc) is beyond belief. Clinton and Obama might've capitalized on their identities in pandering to the progressive wing, but that's the point: the identity stuff is coming from the far left side of the party which is absolutely breathless about identity stuff (Sanders here is the exception to the rule). On more than one occasion, Obama explicitly cautioned against left wing identity extremism while "The Squad" cheerleaded the BLM riots. Do you think Warren, AOC, Omar, etc are really "moderate Democrats" or do you disagree that they are committed identitarians?
      - camgunz 5y ago
        I guess I disagree with your taxonomy, and I think The Squad has wrestled with being progressives while also being unwilling to let identity issues go. I'm very pro-Warren, but I think if you look at the policies pushed not just by her but by the other women you named, you'll find a lot of economic and climate policy (I mean Green New Deal, come on). The right-wing propaganda machine is very hard on ambitious women (as a former Hillary staffer I can attest to this), and it's definitely part of the plan to smear these folks in particular. I think we should be asking why there's a concerted, well-funded messaging effort against these women and not against people saying similar things like Hakeem Jeffries or Bernie Sanders. My personal view is that it's raw misogyny. And, frankly, I think you're repeating a lot of it here. In particular your use of the word "cheerleaded" is a pretty gendered criticism. We're all misogynists, we're all racists, we're all homophobes, because of the culture we grew up in. But by introspecting on this, we're able to fight against it and create a fairer society.
        throwaway894345 5y ago
        The right has plenty of criticism for Sanders but they don’t criticize him for being an identitarian because he largely isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with gendered language, but that wasn’t how I was using “cheerleading” and if we want to lob accusations it seems pretty sexist to imply that men oughtn’t be cheerleaders.
- kodah 5y ago
  Just an FYI, you and the person that's responding to you are talking about the same people but use two different words for them. A real leftist ideological group doesn't exist in the US; progressives are not that for certain. To the right, however, a leftist is a US progressive.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Progressives and leftists are approximately the same thing in US politics, not just among the right (the American right doesn’t even distinguish between liberals and progressives—it just calls everyone left of center “liberals”).
    - kodah 5y ago
      Not at all; talk to any global leftist and they'll tell you US progressive policy and values don't match up with theirs at all. Anecdotally, I've known these kinds of folks for a while through FOSS and IRC. I'm also dating an actual leftist.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        You’re observing that political labels vary semantically between political systems. “liberal” in the UK has a different meaning than in the US. Similarly, “leftist” means something different in an American context than it does in your “global” context (although I suspect “global” here is really only accurate for Europe, but that’s a debate for another day).
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > “liberal” in the UK has a different meaning than in the US. Liberal doesn't have any consistent meaning in the US. (Like, nearly every point on the spectrum uses it differently > Similarly, “leftist” means something different in an American context than it does in your “global” context Not particularly. Except in the propaganda of the American Right, where it is one of a pile of indistinct labels like Marxist, liberal, Communist, woke, critical race theory, etc., applied indiscriminately to everything they disagree with.
throwaway894345 5y ago
I disagree from extensive experience. Unadorned, “privilege” refers to some identity privilege 99% of the time. For example, “check your privilege” virtually always refers to some identity privilege. Moreover, the salient point wasn’t “the left doesn’t believe in wealth privilege” as much as “no one disputes wealth privilege and thus Henderson isn’t being hypocritical here as you imply”.
- camgunz 5y ago
  I think the left gets caricatured heavily by the right (there's a "both sides" counterargument here, but my view is that the right is very easy to caricature because it's mostly absurd, and my arguments are gay marriage, gun laws, climate change, immigration, and fiscal/monetary policy) into an image of a huge Twitter mob canceling people for saying the wrong words and miscounting the number of genders. I'm very unsympathetic to people coming from this view of the left; it feels lazy and motivated entirely by insecurity and animus. Even if it's true, compared with the problems caused by Republican policies (Iraq/Afghanistan wars, gutting of regulatory state and scientific research leading to opioid crisis, deregulation, tax cuts, attacks on unions leading to the total collapse of the middle class, active lobbying against climate science leading to... Armageddon?) it carries no weight. Or TLDR, yeah sometimes we get carried away on Twitter. But at least we're not roasting the planet.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I agree that the right has a lot of problems and I disagree with them on most issues. I even agree that the problems on the right are worse than those on the left in a certain sense. I also agree that the right-wing view of the left is a caricature like you describe, but I think that caricature is rooted in some truth. For example, while there are other concerns on the left, identity has become a hugely popular issue on the American left in the last decade. To that end, it's disingenuous to portray this as "a right-wing concern" when lots of liberals are concerned about it as well. Moreover, many people (myself included) think that this identity politics stuff is tearing at our social fabric, not only by fostering racial divides, but also because Americans of all stripes are losing trust in institutions which have increasingly rejected aspirational neutrality and objectivity in favor of progressive activism. I don't know how to compare this to certain Republican policies which are more immediately damaging. > Even if it's true, compared with the problems caused by Republican policies (Iraq/Afghanistan wars, gutting of regulatory state and scientific research leading to opioid crisis, deregulation, tax cuts, attacks on unions leading to the total collapse of the middle class, active lobbying against climate science leading to... Armageddon?) it carries no weight. I have plenty of bad things to say about Republican policies, but the Iraq/Afghan wars were bipartisan and I don't think deregulation is a clear and universal evil nor are unions an unmitigated good. Agreed that climate inaction is prevalent among Republicans, but I consider Democrats' empty words and gestures (as they pertain to climate) to be just another kind of inaction. Democrats will get bragging rights when they rally around a serious climate pricing policy--if you believe (as I do) that the world is really burning, why don't Democrats offer a budget proposal which reflects that? Why don't they rally around any of the annually-proposed carbon pricing bills? Why did they allow themselves to be completely and wholly fixated on an obviously fake crisis of racist police killings for the better part of the last decade? Why do we allocate so much of our national debate bandwidth to pronouns and bathroom policies if we believe we're veering toward mass extinction? That said, I think it's super destructive to use Republican behavior (or in many cases, a caricature thereof) to excuse every criticism of Democratic behavior. That's a recipe for racing to the bottom IMO. Instead of responding to "Democrats aren't taking climate seriously enough" with "well, Republicans are worse ergo Democrat climate inaction is fine" it would be great if we could focus on ways to improve Democratic climate policy.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> I don't think the left thinks of privilege solely as racial or gender privilege. The left doesn't thing of privilege as even primarily racial or gender privilege. (The people that do are centrists; the actual left centers class privilege, though there are leftists who see race/gender issues as important secondary/connected issues to class issues.)

throwaway894345 5y ago
You have it exactly backwards. Centrists center class privilege while leftists center race/gender/etc privilege. For example, when discussing racial inequality, leftists will tend to argue “disparity thus discrimination” while centrists (and moderates of all stripes, really) will argue that the mechanism is classist but it manifests as a disparity because the class distributions aren’t uniform across races. I certainly agree that historically leftists were very concerned about class, but that hasn’t been the popular analysis among American leftists for a decade.
- camgunz 5y ago
  Eh, I think he's right. On the ground, the "centrists" are mostly the Clinton/Obama wing of the party who are very fluent in identity issues and the "leftists" are mostly the Sanders wing of the party who are more focused on economics. Maybe ironically, as one of them I wouldn't say "centrists" center anything. We tend to see the whole thing as a milieu. Not that economic issues aren't super important, but there's no serious way to analyze the US without taking both economic and identity issues into account.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Agreed that centrists (or more precisely, "moderate Democrats") are more aligned to Clinton/Obama wing, but the idea that Clinton/Obama are the identitarians rather than the progressive wing (Warren, AOC, Pressley, Tlaib, Omar, etc) is beyond belief. Clinton and Obama might've capitalized on their identities in pandering to the progressive wing, but that's the point: the identity stuff is coming from the far left side of the party which is absolutely breathless about identity stuff (Sanders here is the exception to the rule). On more than one occasion, Obama explicitly cautioned against left wing identity extremism while "The Squad" cheerleaded the BLM riots. Do you think Warren, AOC, Omar, etc are really "moderate Democrats" or do you disagree that they are committed identitarians?
    - camgunz 5y ago
      I guess I disagree with your taxonomy, and I think The Squad has wrestled with being progressives while also being unwilling to let identity issues go. I'm very pro-Warren, but I think if you look at the policies pushed not just by her but by the other women you named, you'll find a lot of economic and climate policy (I mean Green New Deal, come on). The right-wing propaganda machine is very hard on ambitious women (as a former Hillary staffer I can attest to this), and it's definitely part of the plan to smear these folks in particular. I think we should be asking why there's a concerted, well-funded messaging effort against these women and not against people saying similar things like Hakeem Jeffries or Bernie Sanders. My personal view is that it's raw misogyny. And, frankly, I think you're repeating a lot of it here. In particular your use of the word "cheerleaded" is a pretty gendered criticism. We're all misogynists, we're all racists, we're all homophobes, because of the culture we grew up in. But by introspecting on this, we're able to fight against it and create a fairer society.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        The right has plenty of criticism for Sanders but they don’t criticize him for being an identitarian because he largely isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with gendered language, but that wasn’t how I was using “cheerleading” and if we want to lob accusations it seems pretty sexist to imply that men oughtn’t be cheerleaders.
kodah 5y ago
Just an FYI, you and the person that's responding to you are talking about the same people but use two different words for them. A real leftist ideological group doesn't exist in the US; progressives are not that for certain. To the right, however, a leftist is a US progressive.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Progressives and leftists are approximately the same thing in US politics, not just among the right (the American right doesn’t even distinguish between liberals and progressives—it just calls everyone left of center “liberals”).
  - kodah 5y ago
    Not at all; talk to any global leftist and they'll tell you US progressive policy and values don't match up with theirs at all. Anecdotally, I've known these kinds of folks for a while through FOSS and IRC. I'm also dating an actual leftist.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      You’re observing that political labels vary semantically between political systems. “liberal” in the UK has a different meaning than in the US. Similarly, “leftist” means something different in an American context than it does in your “global” context (although I suspect “global” here is really only accurate for Europe, but that’s a debate for another day).
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > “liberal” in the UK has a different meaning than in the US. Liberal doesn't have any consistent meaning in the US. (Like, nearly every point on the spectrum uses it differently > Similarly, “leftist” means something different in an American context than it does in your “global” context Not particularly. Except in the propaganda of the American Right, where it is one of a pile of indistinct labels like Marxist, liberal, Communist, woke, critical race theory, etc., applied indiscriminately to everything they disagree with.

throwaway894345 5y ago

I disagree from extensive experience. Unadorned, “privilege” refers to some identity privilege 99% of the time. For example, “check your privilege” virtually always refers to some identity privilege. Moreover, the salient point wasn’t “the left doesn’t believe in wealth privilege” as much as “no one disputes wealth privilege and thus Henderson isn’t being hypocritical here as you imply”.

camgunz 5y ago
I think the left gets caricatured heavily by the right (there's a "both sides" counterargument here, but my view is that the right is very easy to caricature because it's mostly absurd, and my arguments are gay marriage, gun laws, climate change, immigration, and fiscal/monetary policy) into an image of a huge Twitter mob canceling people for saying the wrong words and miscounting the number of genders. I'm very unsympathetic to people coming from this view of the left; it feels lazy and motivated entirely by insecurity and animus. Even if it's true, compared with the problems caused by Republican policies (Iraq/Afghanistan wars, gutting of regulatory state and scientific research leading to opioid crisis, deregulation, tax cuts, attacks on unions leading to the total collapse of the middle class, active lobbying against climate science leading to... Armageddon?) it carries no weight. Or TLDR, yeah sometimes we get carried away on Twitter. But at least we're not roasting the planet.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I agree that the right has a lot of problems and I disagree with them on most issues. I even agree that the problems on the right are worse than those on the left in a certain sense. I also agree that the right-wing view of the left is a caricature like you describe, but I think that caricature is rooted in some truth. For example, while there are other concerns on the left, identity has become a hugely popular issue on the American left in the last decade. To that end, it's disingenuous to portray this as "a right-wing concern" when lots of liberals are concerned about it as well. Moreover, many people (myself included) think that this identity politics stuff is tearing at our social fabric, not only by fostering racial divides, but also because Americans of all stripes are losing trust in institutions which have increasingly rejected aspirational neutrality and objectivity in favor of progressive activism. I don't know how to compare this to certain Republican policies which are more immediately damaging. > Even if it's true, compared with the problems caused by Republican policies (Iraq/Afghanistan wars, gutting of regulatory state and scientific research leading to opioid crisis, deregulation, tax cuts, attacks on unions leading to the total collapse of the middle class, active lobbying against climate science leading to... Armageddon?) it carries no weight. I have plenty of bad things to say about Republican policies, but the Iraq/Afghan wars were bipartisan and I don't think deregulation is a clear and universal evil nor are unions an unmitigated good. Agreed that climate inaction is prevalent among Republicans, but I consider Democrats' empty words and gestures (as they pertain to climate) to be just another kind of inaction. Democrats will get bragging rights when they rally around a serious climate pricing policy--if you believe (as I do) that the world is really burning, why don't Democrats offer a budget proposal which reflects that? Why don't they rally around any of the annually-proposed carbon pricing bills? Why did they allow themselves to be completely and wholly fixated on an obviously fake crisis of racist police killings for the better part of the last decade? Why do we allocate so much of our national debate bandwidth to pronouns and bathroom policies if we believe we're veering toward mass extinction? That said, I think it's super destructive to use Republican behavior (or in many cases, a caricature thereof) to excuse every criticism of Democratic behavior. That's a recipe for racing to the bottom IMO. Instead of responding to "Democrats aren't taking climate seriously enough" with "well, Republicans are worse ergo Democrat climate inaction is fine" it would be great if we could focus on ways to improve Democratic climate policy.