At this point I’m tired of hearing “the left” this, “the left” that and turning out what they mean are democrats.
Democrats ain’t left. They’re typically progressive socially, but that’s not leftism. That’s just trying to be a decent human being.
But you look at democrat’s policies, and more often than not they’re choked with war spending, colonialist attitudes, SOOOOOooo much commercial graft, and what is almost more galling than any of that is that the democrats take the support of the left for granted. Two party system, do you want right wing nutjobs who will murder you? Or do you want vanilla right wing?
Nor is it NOT on the left, though. Leaving out social issues is leaving out a major aspect of oppression in modern society.
I would very much like people to pay mind to all aspects of oppression because they are all real and matter. But the dirtbag left seems to have a tendency to ignore the social issues, as if they are not real or as if they don’t have a material impact on the people who experience oppression. They very much do have a material impact on the lives of people who experience them, and very often that intersects with class issues.
More and more, the left-right language of our modern political discourse is proving not up to the task of realistically addressing the actual problems many of us face in this world. Anyone seeking to disconnected class from other issues is part of that and are not effective allies in the struggle for freedom.
[ETA] And to your point about the democratic party, you’re not wrong. But until we have an actual left in this country, voting for third parties at a national level has not been particularly helpful or effective in pushing the democratic party to the left. Sander’s strategy of running AS a democrat (while not toning down his political positions, which is pretty far left for the US) has had a measurable impact on the platform of the party. It IS putting pressure for greater political inclusion in the democratic party. If our options are push from the outside of the party to push from the inside of the party, both are difficult, but the latter has seemed to bear a bit more fruit. I say colonize and shift, rather than yell from outside the tent. Then again, as a woman, I have far more on the line than just pocket book issues (though I have those, too). Any party that refuses to acknowledge my basic rights as a human being will not have my support. Bodily autonomy is a core issue for me, because it goes to my basic right as a full citizen. If I can’t have bodily autonomy, I’m not an equal citizen.
I don’t think we disagree. I’m just disappointed with democrats at the national level.
Social justice is very important. But you’re not going to achieve it with a street mural and a 100 million dollar grant to Pepsi Co. And so much democratic proposals right now are just flag waving feel-good stuff that doesn’t actually make any difference for oppressed groups at all.
I largely agree with you, but with regard to the question of what “dirtbag left” means, there simply isn’t much to do with policy. As @Purplecat mentioned, it’s a label used by people nominally in the left to derogate some other folks who nominally claim to be on the left, but who aren’t in their opinion. Exactly what “left” means is left to the eyes of the beholder, but yeah, “dirtbag left” is really useless as a marker of belief or principle, since in many cases, people with that label or applying that label don’t really have any of those things in a coherent way.
I have never heard the second definition before. Just about everyone I have seen online will dismissively call them liberals, but never the dirt bag left.
I see that one on YouTube and discord a fair amount, in comment threads that are tangential to the topic at hand (don’t really watch much political stuff, but it’s YouTube and discord can be quite a cesspool).
From the last one (just reading the onebox there), that’s basically what she’s arguing, that it is a form of class politics (since it’s often addressed collectively). She also notes that of course there are some (especially in the upper classes) who used IP as a means of denying economic class as a form of oppression, but it’s not the majority of activists, who are often oppressed in several ways, including along class lines. She also notes that people who only want to act on class oppression are themselves practicing a form of identity politics themselves as they see themselves as part of a identity that just happens to be class based. She herself would like to NOT have to focus on identity, because it’s an impostion. The embrace of categories like Black or trans were imposed from without, but has been embraced as a means of empowering the group to take collective action.
[ETA] Also, I got a security risk message when I clicked on the Hobsbawm link… Is this it?
But once again, while working on issues of class and labor will help some women, if we don’t control our bodies, it’s literally meaningless, as I am not a free person, as men are in control of my reproductive capacity. And given that working class women of color make far less than even white women, you can’t just address that by the class/labor axis. I will not be fully free until I have full bodily autonomy AND I am treated equal in the work place. ONE of those things most white men, even working class men, do not have to contend with. Black men, of course, is another story, given how much their physical bodies are policed and how many men of color are in prison BECAUSE they are Black AND working class. Focusing only on class will not solve their problems either.
I’m arguing that we can’t focus on one thing here. If you leave any of these intersections ignored, you only end up with a less oppressive society for some… which is what we’ve had for a while now. Some are not as oppressed as others and it’s not always about class and labor issues.
I’ve written a bit on the subject, but a quick way to summarize:
The “dirtbag left” (sometimes called Brocialists) reject intersectionalism, arguing that the only injustice that requires immediate addressing is the financial structure of government.
Prominent “Dirtbag Left” personalities include Aimee Terese of Red Scare, who has often engaged in racist rhetoric and whose political views are hard to meaningfully distinguish from American white nationalists.
“Dirtbag Left” personalities reject pretty much all written theory developed since 1870 and refuse to engage in praxis, instead engaging in harassment campaigns and online dunk circlejerks.
Notably, “Dirtbag Left” personalities are invariably white or white-passing.
Dirtbag left is associated with CTH, but broadly the name is really a cleaned up term for the leftypol audience. There have been white leftists who don’t like white supremecists but still hang around with them because they’re cool guys and political correctness is censoring their right to be an asshole. That’s why issues about intersectionalism are met with resistance from the “all workers matter” crowds who make memes identical to the alt-right and gaters except with marx instead of pepe.
And just like all extremely toxic subcultures, the unwillingness to turn an inward eye leads to them instead circling the wagons is why it dies and/or evolves into something worse. People will flat out deny to the death that this portion of the left political landscape exists no matter how much the reality gets pointed out, and justify it for all the same reasons: it’s real, that’s how Americans talk, it’s just funny, you just saw/heard them at their worst most the time they’re cool, etc.
It’s the same crowd that gets wooed by the intellectual dark web.
Fortunately, you can ask the poster if you’re unclear on a term, or better yet, look it up. Despite the real problems with the internet, it can be helpful in furthering your own personal education… All of us at some point are confronted with our lack of knowledge on something, after all.
Here’s a story from just after the 2016 election. Now, one is not bound to the past, and certainly not bound to someone else’s obsolete historical understanding, but…
That article implies that they are particularly dismissive of identity politics and “neo liberalism”. Sometimes I get the impression that those kinds of critiques are often leveled at the “human rights campaign”.
That wasn’t the definition I was questioning. It was this:
I haven’t seen anyone on the left call that group the dirtbag left.
And I don’t think you will find many people on the left (dirtbag or otherwise) who aren’t dismissive of neoliberalism. It is a right wing (but not far right) ideology.
