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Comment by cgvgffyv | Hacker News Reader

Regressive left?

I was taught the left represents progress and equality, whereas the right represents stagnation and oppression, and by God and wishful thinking I intend for this to never change!

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The emergence of the 'regressive left' wasn't something I expected either, but I think it's important to remember that ideology and methodology are not the same thing. For example, I've noticed in the last decade or so a lot of people ( many friends ) embracing established science as a religion; no attempt to understand the material, and no interest in the progress of science or it's methodology other than as a stick to try to beat up the perceived opposition to their group.

> embracing established science as a religion

There's a deeper issue here, regarding information, legitimacy/authority and scope.

Science should be embraced, just some department (social sciences) aren't as scientific as assumed.

If you actually go through and read that long article, it's worth a read and I stumbled on to this guy last month and very happy that I did. He goes into detail about why academia especially in humanities and social sciences is wrong. And my feeling at this point is that academia is simply an extension of prevailing ideology that is pushed by the elite. Social science in academia does not really have a basis in truth or fact finding, and Chomsky came out against this decades ago. But it's just a mechanism for educating the masses with the prevailing dogma that the elite want to push. And it seems that this sort of approach is starting to fail... because the masses are no longer listening and becoming skeptical of everything that is being taught because it does not work as advertised.

That's interesting, because in Eastern Europe, the Left can, and sometimes really is, perceived as regressive. Just an example: during the immigration crisis the leading newspaper in Poland run a series articles on how you can lose your job if you make critical comments about immigrants. This was really reminiscent of the socialist regime not so long ago, where people were rarely killed, but you could easily lose your job (and have real trouble finding another one!) because of just one critical remark. So if you really care about your family, you keep your opinions to yourself. It always amuses me when the media is surprised with the results of the elections then.

There was no such thing. I remember one case when some guy was fired because his employer didn't like his comment on immigrants and that was pretty much all. No one from the left has ever claimed that people should be fired because of their opinions.

I don't mean people are actually being fired, just articles about it, with very clear message: watch out what you say. I was so surprised I wanted to take a picture of one of these. It was around the time when they called anti-immigrant march organizers "Nazi" and turned off comments for all articles on immigrants, Muslims and Islam. It's just like Peterson says - if people don't talk to each other, they become enemies.

Regressive left is what happens when you brainwash enough people with extreme socialist philosophy (cough Karl Marx cough), fact-free nonsense such as "the patriarchy" and "female wage gap", and outright lies through social science departments at universities.

In fact, you could call the ideology these people believe in "neo-Marxism" or "cultural Marxism". And this is no understatement: if you love everything the West has to offer now like freedom of speech, freedom of expression, democracy, and capitalism while the ideas of regressives at first sight might look super attractive and they themselves might at first look super friendly, they are not your friends but your adversaries. Because instead of fixing the issues Western civilization has today within the system, they want to figuratively burn it down to the ground and start over, with a system based on Marxist philosophy where everyone is so equal that even when you are suspected of wrongthink you become a candidate for Marxist style reeducation or worse.

History also has factually shown several attempts to start over with a new, "better" system and all had gigantic miserable repercussions. And do not let them fool you into believing they are doing the "right thing" and "this time it will be different". There is a long list of people who thought the same thing and every single time things indeed became different, but worse.

Small addendum: while we can miss the far left and far right like a sore toothache the moderate left and right are not really enemies, they are intellectual counterparts and they need each other. To make actual progress happen for everyone you do not need a "winner", but you need a well thought out inclusive vision which measures up to facts.

Or to make things more concrete: You do not only need the fast young smart startup whizkid entrepreneur kicking a ton of interesting ideas around (the "moderate left") but also the old and wise manager (the "moderate right") who takes these ideas and measures them up based on experience (historical knowledge)

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