Hacker News Reader

Comment by newsclues | Hacker News Reader

It seems like these creators and others like Tim pool, have found a sizeable niche audience that really supports them (in part they are alienated by the mainstream and the alt right welcomes them).

It’s weird how hippies have become conservatives if they didn’t go woke.

View on HN

>>It’s weird how hippies have become conservatives if they didn’t go woke.

Except they dont... Conservative has a very specific political meaning, and to consider everyone that is "not woke" either conservative or alt-right shows a massive ignorance of the political landscape

Classic Liberal, or libertarian people still exist, we are here. The 1990's and 00's the battle was against conservatives wanting ti suppress speech, blame violence on video games, and all other manner of BS.

Today it seems the far left has also taken up the mantra of speech suppression, and blame video games for all manner of social ill's,

It is the Horseshoe Theory of politics manifest in reality..

One can be "not woke" and at the same time, not conservative...

the " sizeable niche audience" is actually the sane people, the middle of the road people, the people that think both Extreme Conservatives, and Extreme "Leftists" are crazy....

As a bike riding, pot smoking, liberty minded hippie, perhaps becoming was the wrong word, but I have more in common with conservatives than the progressive activists.

When you say “except they don’t” and I am part of that group that has, my existence proves you wrong. But perhaps it was just my poor use of language

The key is in the way you're looking at it: "I have more in common with conservatives than the progressive activists"

You didn't compare conservative activists with progressive activists, or conservative activists with progressives.

If you're comparing the mainstream views of one side with the extremes of the other, (or worse: a caricature of the other side that you've been told about) then of course you're going to find the other more extreme.

No I’m seeing the mainstream left get bullied into becoming the activist left and the moderate leftists like myself are now suddenly closer on the spectrum to moderate conservatives, because the bulk of the left wing went to the left extreme.

Stop trying to reframe my experiences.

I wasn't reframing what you said. I quoted you verbatim.

What is an example of something that the mainstream left supports now that is extreme in your view?

Also: do you not see the mainstream right being pulled to the right by its activists?

Leftists, following Marx, have material concerns. They DGAF about video games or pronouns. Perhaps "progressives" is the word to use, because there certainly is a noisy group of identity politicians who have sold what little dignity they once possessed to Capital, and we do need something to call them. Selling one's dignity to capitalists and war pigs is not a leftist thing to do, so they certainly aren't "far left".

you are correct in that they are a distinct group, however even if they are "selling out to capital" which I don't think they are, they are still very much Authoritarian Socially, and "left" Economically

So while they "Cultural Marxists" or Identity Marxists as they call themselves, may be different from your preferred economic marxism, they are still IMO part of the "far left Authoritarian" quadrant of say the political compass

Does anyone call herself an "Identity Marxist"? I suspect actual cultural Marxists like Lukács, Gramsci, Benjamin, or Hall would be quite interested in studying the phenomenon of applying that label to people who have never considered the ownership of the means of production.

This is a problem with this whole line of thinking. We should be able to criticize identity politics as it is, for its excess and harmful effects. (Likewise, we should be able to praise it, for any praiseworthy qualities it might be observed to have.) Shoehorning in an association with Marxism is either a rhetorical crutch or a baseless slur. Marxism isn't a synonym for "bad"; it is a particular school of criticism.

I might be able to live with the term "Identity Stalinists"...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com