#ideology gaps

[codesquire]

The best thing that happened to my grandparents' generation, was that they died before seeing their children their country turn into the monster they slew in WWII.

God, what a fucking disgrace the boomers became, ethically and politically.

[canichangemyblogname]

The political compass isn’t a perfect measure of political alignment, but it did help my father finally conceptualize where he sits relative to the people he used to vote for (Republicans).

Years ago, I came home from college for break and had all my family take the political compass quiz. The quiz frustrated my very anxious and wildly neurodivergent father who either wanted to answer “it depends” on every-other question or throw his hands in the air and shout, “No one would honestly pick these other answers! They’re immoral!” Neither of those were actual options, tho.

When we all got done taking the test, my father and I were the furthest left on the compass, situated firmly in the bottom left of the box. He was shocked to see how close he was to me in his results, as I had nearly given him a heart attack a year earlier after telling him I was a communist at just a semester into college. So he asked me where Joe and Trump sat on the compass. And I explained how they would both sit firmly at the top of the top right quadrant.

He was genuinely shocked. He was shocked that his politics were so dramatically different than the people he was voting for. And he was shocked that, despite how dramatic the differences between his politics and ideology and my own, we were closer to each other in our alignment than he was to the president at the time, Trump.

He hasn’t looked at politics and his political alignment the same since.

[sendmyresignation]

ok so knee deep in girls to the front which is incredibly interesting to hold up against dance of days. but the number one thing that keeps itching at my brain is like. I feel like so much of the discussion around riot grrl does a disservice to the fact this community was full of literal teenagers, both from the standpoint of why they were taking the specific actions they were, with what little political power young women are able to wield, but also explains why riot grrl... isn't perfect like god forbid the radical thought i had at seventeen doesn't just start a very public and easily hated youth moment but is also scrutinized and held up forever as The Thing You Believe Now. so much of my personal issue re: riot grrl is with the Canon and the retrospective understanding of the scene and much much less to do with the actual things fermenting in young people's minds/motivating them into taking actionable steps to mitigate unrelenting patriarchy because it's admirable to see young people take those steps.

[briony-tallis]

currently working on some intensive research on the midcentury civil rights movement and it's becoming clear that one of the defining characteristics of leftist activism in the digital age (and why that activism never seems to do anything useful for the cause despite occupying the largest communication network in history) is that the majority of participants are acting with the intent of signaling virtue to the in-group and have no interest in doing the necessary outreach to bring about material change.

[girlplagued]

age gap discourse has devolved into something so rancid… men on r/codyko defending him sleeping with a 17 year old girl at 25 bc “she was about to turn 18 and there’s no maturity difference” meanwhile an LGBT teenager is posting in an advice forum on whether it’s “okay” as a 17 year old to date another 17 year old who is turning 18 in two months and other teens telling her no bc the other girl will be an adult for all of 6 months while she’s a minor 😭 we are so unbelievably cooked

[gothhabiba]

as someone whos only really good at understanding/speaking arabic dialect (and a mish-mash of two dialects at that, lmao) the way people will demand that you disregard any non-fusha interpretation of the language or remember that its not "proper" arabic drives me NUTS like that is not a useful thing to tell anyone and it certainly didn't make me want to learn fusha more than just strengthening my dialect skills when i was taking it in school!!

the idea that anyone could find it useful to be able to talk to people rather than like, go to business school or whatever, is I suppose surprising to them

[maxellminidisc]

The way Zionist just stay telling on themselves would be funny if their mindset and propaganda wasn't literally killing people....

[attila-werther]

the depeche mode to disco elysium replay pipeline

[maaarine]

Why are British teenage girls so unhappy? Here’s the answer (Caitlin Moran, The Times, Sep 13 2024)

"The report, by the Children’s Society, found that British 15-year-old girls are the most unhappy in Europe.

British girls aged 10-15 are “significantly less happy” with their life, appearance, family and school than the average boy — and their happiness is still declining.

Boys’ life satisfaction, meanwhile, remains broadly stable. (…)

But I still didn’t have an “aha!” moment about why this so disproportionately affects girls until… I talked to some teenage girls.

It was at a party, and I went to vape with them on the patio. Because I take my nicotine like children do.

“Duh — it’s the boys,” one said when I brought it up, as all the others agreed.

“The boys?” I asked.

My last book, What About Men?, had been all about how much boys struggle these days: their loneliness; their suicide rates. I’d spent the past year feeling very sympathetic towards boys.

“Yeah, well, who do you think they’re taking out their unhappiness on? It’s us,” another girl said.

“One boy at school used to draw a picture every day of how ugly I was,” a third girl said. “Every day for two years.”

“They’ve all got ‘Rate The Girls’ polls on their WhatsApps,” the first said. “They mark you down for weight gain, haircuts, what you say.”

“But then, if you’re hot, it’s just as bad, in a different way, because they’ll be talking about how they want to f*** you.”

The girls discussed coping techniques. Bad news: none of them worked.

“The only way you can stop them is if you become ‘one of the boys’ and hang out with them. But then,” the second girl said with a sigh, “all the other girls call you a slut. Because you’ve gone over to the boys’ side.”

“Surely it’s not all the boys?” I said. “There must be some nice boys?”

“Oh, yeah,” one girl said. “But they keep their heads down. Because… well, look.”

She showed me the Instagram account of her friend. Under every picture she posted of herself — smiling in a new dress; with her dog — dozens of anonymous accounts had replied with the most rank abuse.

“Fat.” “Slut.” “You gonna try and kill yourself again, for attention?”

“They’re all boys from her school,” she said. “And look, this one boy tried to defend her.”

I saw a series of messages from a brave teenage boy, posting things like, “You’re all big men, leaving these replies under anonymous accounts.”

As I could see, this boy immediately became a target too. Mainly accusations that he was “white knighting” this girl: “You wanna f*** her, bro?”

“So,” I asked, “you don’t think it’s social media pressure to be beautiful, or the economy, that’s making girls so sad?”

“Well, yeah, them too,” the first girl said. “But, Monday-Friday, 9-3, I’m not on social media. I’m not… in the economy. I’m just with these boys. And no one talks about how horrible they are.”

I thought about another recent report, showing a 30 per cent ideological gap between Gen Z men, who are increasingly conservative, and Gen Z women, who are increasingly progressive.

I thought about Andrew Tate, who has nine million mostly young male followers — and faces human trafficking charges, which he denies.

And I thought: maybe these girls are on to something. Maybe more people need to vape with teenage girls and ask them for the school gossip."

[sentientcanvas]

"As a feminist, I don't see people with your views as potential life partners because I don't think you're on my side. I don't think you'll support me when I experience sexism at work, or I'm harassed at a bar. Or treated poorly during childbirth. I don't think you'll do your share of the housework, or childcare. I don't think you'll put my career advancement at the same level of importance of your own."

- reddit user magical_elf explaining why women don't want to date conservatives

[valtsv]

removing your masked character's mask is a mistake aesthetically ideologically and sexually speaking but i won't deny that catching a glimpse of a little skin in the spaces beneath the eye holes or the gap where the mask meets the face gets me a bit hot under the collar

[mariyamasghar99]

[wis-art]

The worst period of my life was when I was a self hating teenager in denial about being transgender. I grew up in a deeply abusive household and my father expected me to be his manly son and I tried to conform despite it driving me insane, I fell down many nasty rabbitholes because of my insecurities rooted in deep hatred of my body and deep hatred of what I should be, I have always felt uneasy looking at men in cartoons and movies thinking to myself how much I don't want to become that, always envying the girls and always dreaming about waking up as a girl. This all lead me online because I felt so isolated from the world and I couldn't relate to anybody. Of course an unmedicated self hating teenager, with grand delusions about being god's little special soldier, seeking ANY validation is bound to fall into some horrible places, i am one of the victims of the alt right pipeline, and it did drive me into suicidal spirals many times over how much I hated myself for being transgender. Eventually I snapped out of it and grew out of it but the taste in my mouth of ever associating myself with that kind of community is really disgusting and never seems to wash off from my tongue, which I suppose is good since I never want to be back there mentally. I despise the right wingers, seeing and experiencing their beliefs first hand, it's all just driven by hate and insecurity, the only reason why it's so popular is because these people prey on lack of knowledge and insecurity of any kind, offering easy solutions and quick fixes, putting an easy target to direct your hate towards just to deflect the hate away from yourself. It is not a valid or real solution or even political ideology, it's a grift and a worldview sold to people who know their future is uncertain, it's harnessing the societal instability and crisis for political and financial gain, and I was a sucker for it in my teenage years for which I apologize. Nowadays I am unapologetically a leftist, with flaws and gaps in knowledge, like any other human on this earth but fundamentally different and changed from when I was a kid, and I am proud of myself and I am proud to be the bad transgender bitch that I am. It took so much effort, medicine, therapy, help from my family, help from my friends for me to realize that I was wrong and that I need to change. I did not do it alone. And I'm glad I did it, and I'm happy to ve fortunate enough to receive help and support despite being a toxic unpleasant person to be around. All so I can just be Wis in peace a weird transgender woman on the internet, drawing trans women who despise the fascists and nazis. It's also why I so deeply believe in people changing and why I am so adamantly against harassing people for their mistakes for years, it just doesn't help, all it does is makes one ashamed and all shame does is drive one further into the abyss of self hatred. As corny as it sounds love has saved me and it is love and patience that helps people change

[pronoun-fucker]

Extreme misogyny will be treated as a form of extremism under new government plans, the Home Office has said.

Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has ordered a review of the UK's counter-extremism strategy to determine how best to tackle threats posed by harmful ideologies.

The analysis will look at hatred of women as one of the ideological trends that the government says is gaining traction.

Ms Cooper said there has been a rise in extremism "both online and on our streets" that "frays the very fabric of our communities and our democracy".

The review will look at the rise of Islamist and far-right extremism in the UK, as well as wider ideological trends, including extreme misogyny or beliefs which fit into broader categories, such as violence.

It will also look at the causes and conduct of the radicalisation of young people.

Ms Cooper said the strategy will "map and monitor extremist trends" to work out how to disrupt and divert people away from them.

It will also "identify any gaps in existing policy which need to be addressed to crack down on those pushing harmful and hateful beliefs and violence", she said.

Ms Cooper said that action against extremism has been "badly hollowed out" in recent years.

The work will inform a new counter-extremism strategy, which was promised in Labour's manifesto and which the Home Office says will "respond to growing and changing patterns" of extremism across the UK.

Link | Archived Link

[apas-95]

is there any room for shein in leftism at all? like what if you’re poor and fat and that’s the only place that sells clothes that are cheap enough to fit a larger body? i saw someone staunchly defending this position online. is there something i’m missing? i thought shein’s existence was completely antithetical to leftist ideology???

The question doesn't make sense - if by 'leftism' you mean communism, then communism isn't based on individual shopping habits. A socialist state is brought about by a proletarian vanguard party waging revolutionary war, not by buying from 'ethical' brands (which don't exist, all businesses under capitalism subsist off the exploitation of the proletariat; and all interactions under capitalism have within them the kernel of all contradictions within capitalism).

Should you buy from Shein, or whatever other company? Who cares? Excepting an organised boycott by said proletarian vanguard party, nothing you as an individual do will have any influence on society at large, it is random noise which will be cancelled out by some other random individual action of the opposite sort.

Under socialism, will Amazon continue to exist? Will it be reorganised? Will H&M and The Gap be made to operate more sustainably? These are questions entirely separate from 'which capitalist should I personally buy my shirt from?'

Lifestyle-ism is not revolution.

[eretzyisrael]

by POTKIN AZARMEHR

‘Pro-Palestine’ protests have become a near-weekly occurrence across Britain. Since Hamas’s 7 October massacre, regular marches have been drawing in a growing number of young people, marked by passionate advocacy and fervent slogans. Yet despite their zeal, many of these protesters lack a fundamental understanding of the conflict they are so vociferously decrying.

In the past six months, I have attended many of these marches. Having engaged with numerous protesters, I have noticed a startling disconnect between their strong opinions on the Gaza conflict and their shaky grasp of basic facts about it. Among the most perplexing are the LGBT and feminist groups (the ‘Queers for Palestine’ types) who flirt with justifying Hamas’s atrocities. This is a bewildering alliance, given that Hamas’s Islamist ideology is clearly antithetical to the rights and values these groups claim to champion. Its reactionary agenda is profoundly hostile to women’s rights and LGBT individuals.

Protesters seem eager to make excuses for Hamas, but are conspicuously uninformed about exactly what or who this terrorist group represents. On 18 May, during a protest at Piccadilly Circus in London, I spoke to demonstrators who firmly believed that Hamas represents all Palestinians. When I questioned a well-educated participant about the last Palestinian election, she was unaware that none had occurred since 2006, when Hamas gained power in Gaza.

It wasn’t just young people who were uninformed. An older woman with an American accent, seemingly a veteran protester, admitted she knew that Hamas was linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, but had no deeper knowledge of its ideology or history. Others, such as members of revolutionary socialist groups, displayed similar gaps in understanding, unaware of critical events like the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

That revolution gave birth to the Islamic Republic of Iran, a theocratic regime that brutally oppresses its own citizens. It also sponsors Islamist groups like Hamas. I left Iran for the UK not long after that regime began and have spent years resisting its religious extremism and ruthless political intolerance. Protesters were not only unaware of these facts about the Iranian regime, but also ill-informed about the struggle against it, such as the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests against the government that began in 2022.

One particularly telling conversation involved a man advocating for a ‘Global Intifada’ to replace capitalism with socialism. When asked about successful socialist models, he was unfamiliar with the Israeli kibbutzim, one of history’s few successful egalitarian experiments. His ignorance of these communal settlements in Israel, built by socialist Jewish immigrants, was all too typical.

Perhaps the most telling moment was captured by commentator Konstantin Kisin earlier this year, when he encountered a young man holding a ‘Socialist Intifada’ placard. The protester admitted he had no idea what this meant and that he had taken the sign simply because it was handed to him.

Reflecting on past movements, such as the American anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and the British Anti-Apartheid Movement of the 1980s, one can’t help but note a stark contrast. Protesters then were generally well-informed about their causes. Today’s pro-Palestine protests, however, seem to be driven more by unthinking fervour than by an understanding of the issues at hand.

Throughout all these protests, I am yet to encounter a single participant who condemns Hamas or carries a placard denouncing its terrorism. This not only undermines the protesters’ cause, but also risks aligning them with groups whose values fundamentally oppose the very rights and freedoms they claim to support. It appears that today’s young protesters are high on ideology, but woefully thin on facts.

Potkin Azarmehr is an Iranian activist and journalist who left Iran for the UK after the revolution of 1979.