• TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I mean I read it before I posted that, I was just picking it out because I think it warrants dissection.

    Whats interesting is that they associate the ‘brahmin left’ with issues that I largely associate with RW issues projection (moral panic over transrights/ dont say gay/ book banning/ immigrant crime/ border crisis/ you fucking name it).

    Like its only being brought up and defended because some RW pr firm trotted it out as a new talking point, and there is always some one willing to write an article on why the RW moral panic is stupid. But the term is pretty fucking perjorative, and dismissive of the fact that without the progressive left of the left-wing of the Democratic voting block, they don’t get elected, period. Its this kind of weird, anti-activist performative centrism.

    Like this class of individuals exists mostly as a response to RW moral panic, then the RW touts them around as having made those arguments in the first place. Its a kind of circular straw man where you engage in a moral panic, some one speaks out in defense, then you project the arguments you want them to have made onto them. Its what the right does, and its what the author is doing to.

    This one is a ‘leave’ in the take it or leave it of the authors bullets.

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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      7 months ago

      Hm… I actually 1,000% agree with you on this part:

      Its a kind of circular straw man where you engage in a moral panic, some one speaks out in defense, then you project the arguments you want them to have made onto them.

      I don’t think I see this discussed nearly enough – Sometimes the left picks up some strawman the right has come up with and actually runs with it, which I’m sure delights the right. It’s a common enough pattern to have a big impact and I basically never see it discussed, so yeah.

      Whats interesting is that they associate the ‘brahmin left’ with issues that I largely associate with RW issues projection (moral panic over transrights/ dont say gay/ book banning/ immigrant crime/ border crisis/ you fucking name it).

      Did they list all these things? I thought it was just trans rights and “defund the police” mostly. I could have missed it?

      I think the author is talking about more of performative leftist stuff. “I put my pronouns on my Starbucks nametag but I have no appetite for starting a union there” style of left that I would also be critical of. But, on the other hand, police reform is a grey area arguably in the core leftist category and the author puts it in the “Brahmin left” category… so yeah, maybe you’re right, and the author is throwing out some stuff that shouldn’t be thrown out (even if it would tactically a “good idea” for appealing to not-politically-conservative-but-not-real-leftist working-class voters.)