#(also while we're at it a daily reminder that commerce is not the same thing as capitalism) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mangled-by-disuse · 1 month ago

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not everything bad is white supremacy

not everything bad is capitalism

not everything bad is conservatism

not everything good is leftist for that matter

maybe this is a hot take but posts that blame, idk, the urge to punish on white supremacy, or power imbalance as a whole on capitalism, or personal greed on conservatism, are just a really great way to not be taken seriously. and shouldn't be taken seriously, because they strongly suggest that you put no thought into the cause of social ills beyond your own context.

#also because it's almost always a way to say that YOUR side would NEVER #like I'm wary about any statements on “human nature”#but it is a fact that many of the things I've seen this applied to #(bigotry and exploitation and greed and violence and over-rationalism and punitive justice and stratified societies and expansionism and...#have existed in societies that are not capitalist and not white or influenced by whiteness #and exist in the left SOMETIMES AS AN EXPRESSION OF LEFTIST THOUGHT #(...and misogyny and classism and ableism and disregard for life/valuing only some lives and hypocrisy and coercion and...)#like to be clear ALL of these are actual examples I've seen in the wild #of assigning things as “the result of [ideology]” with the implications that they would not exist without that ideology #and like i do get that it's more nuanced than that. that the EXPRESSION of bad things is often specific to an ideology.#but i also feel like the more we allow ourselves to believe that bad things come solely from bad politics #the less able we will be to build a better world that addresses social tendencies towards those things #idk mostly I'm just being pissed off by the idea that punitive justice is not just a tool of but a result of white supremacy #LIKE NO THE REASON IT WORKS AS A TOOL IS THAT THE DESIRE FOR PUNITIVE JUSTICE WAS ALREADY THERE #you don't want punitive justice BECAUSE you live in a white supremacist society!#this is not a desire unique to white or white supremacist cultures!#(“nearly all modern societies are affected by white supremacist ideals” is probably true but not relevant because they weren't always)#(my source for a lot of these disputes is to gesture loudly at history)#also because i always fear pissing on the poor: i am NOT saying that the link between action and ideology isn't relevant and with discussin #I'm saying that please stop claiming in so many words that a social evil exists BECAUSE of a political ideology #unless you can actually back it up #(also while we're at it a daily reminder that commerce is not the same thing as capitalism)#(and white supremacy is not the same thing as being white)#(conservatism is a looser term so i don't have as many pithy statements about that one)

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