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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

I'd be curious to understand what you mean by that. From what I've seen/understood the far left is very intent on categorizing, separating, and forcing "equality" upon.

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I mean, you just answered your own question. The far left, and I don't mean just the "American-brand" of it, is very much focused on removing the categorization of individual identity - dismantling the concepts of race, sex, background, belief, nationality, etc. By removing those categories, the aim is to resolve the discrimination inherent in systems that inevitably have some bias towards individuals based on those characteristics, and ultimately make it infeasible to establish a hierarchy of any kind. Paradoxically, in order to do so, the far left must lean heavily into categorization to "remedy" the remnants of injustice that have been levied on groups of people and level the playing field.

There's nothing paradoxical going on here. When people are oppressed via categorization, it's only natural to embrace that categorization to reduce the stigma and turn it into a source of social and/or political power.

It seems to me that the left, idealistically speaking, is intent on removing forced categorization by others. You would be hard pressed find anyone who is trying to remove all individual distinctions, and if you did, that person would be an outlier.

On the contrary, the left, again idealistically, seems to embrace differences, just not those that are imposed and used as a rationale for discrimination.

In my experience, those who go on about "freedom" are usually the most intolerant of individual differences. How about that for irony?

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