The purity tests usually come from leftist adjacent groups that actually have nothing to do with left wing ideology. Read Tankies and some extremely small groups of vegans (Most are fine). They for some reason love telling you “Lefties who aren’t [INSERT THING HERE] are hypocritical and not real leftists”
Really it’s a huge nothing burger complaining about silly people on twitter and Reddit who ultimately do not matter.
Then you lack actual understanding of who leftist are and what they want. Which isn’t an attack against you or anything. Most people in Western societies have been mentally conditioned not. Including myself for the first 30 or so years of my life.
For example, in the United States, Nancy pelosi gets treated as a leftist simply because she’s a Democrat. Despite being pretty far right. All because she’s slightly to the left of fascists in the Republican party. And granted she is socially more tolerant than Republicans. And while social tolerance is good. Social tolerance does not a leftist make. You can be a socially tolerant capitalist, or a bigoted socialist.
Actual leftists don’t seek to be rich. And the further left you go the less likely to be rich in capitalist terms, you are. Leftist derive their wealth from a well functioning society.
Not necessarily. It’s that we tend to look in the wrong places and scales. And even then, because of how violent and oppressive capitalism and Leninism can be to perceived threats. Such groups tend not to advertise their existence.
They do matter. If they didn’t countries like Russia wouldn’t spend so much targetting them with propaganda and pushing them not to vote or vote against admittedly flawed left of centre parties.
The purity tests usually come from leftist adjacent groups that actually have nothing to do with left wing ideology. Read Tankies and some extremely small groups of vegans (Most are fine). They for some reason love telling you “Lefties who aren’t [INSERT THING HERE] are hypocritical and not real leftists”
Really it’s a huge nothing burger complaining about silly people on twitter and Reddit who ultimately do not matter.
They matter because they’re loud and given attention.
Being loud and given attention, they can be the only example of “leftists” some people knowingly interact with.
Yep, it serves the wealthy well for people like them to be the things people visualize when they picture “the left”.
I picture the left as rich leftists who are evil, and poor leftists who are naive.
And yes, I’m aware the left sees us that way too.
Then you lack actual understanding of who leftist are and what they want. Which isn’t an attack against you or anything. Most people in Western societies have been mentally conditioned not. Including myself for the first 30 or so years of my life.
For example, in the United States, Nancy pelosi gets treated as a leftist simply because she’s a Democrat. Despite being pretty far right. All because she’s slightly to the left of fascists in the Republican party. And granted she is socially more tolerant than Republicans. And while social tolerance is good. Social tolerance does not a leftist make. You can be a socially tolerant capitalist, or a bigoted socialist.
Actual leftists don’t seek to be rich. And the further left you go the less likely to be rich in capitalist terms, you are. Leftist derive their wealth from a well functioning society.
See to me it is just about smoothing out the extremes.
We don’t get rich, but no one is poor.
But like communism, it sounds great on paper, but real life examples of success are lacking
Not necessarily. It’s that we tend to look in the wrong places and scales. And even then, because of how violent and oppressive capitalism and Leninism can be to perceived threats. Such groups tend not to advertise their existence.
They do matter. If they didn’t countries like Russia wouldn’t spend so much targetting them with propaganda and pushing them not to vote or vote against admittedly flawed left of centre parties.