#the appeal of leftism is how it props you up

[shalom-iamcominghome]

People findinging out that antisemitism does, in fact, victimize people

[betterbemeta]

Something I think the left is struggling with right now is it’s values. Not in the sense that we’re lapsing in judgement, but that the left typically does not position itself as a moral authority. Most left-wing people, no matter how lukewarm, will not attempt to tell you what is good (beyond the obvious) but will tell you what's going wrong. We know what a bad man is, but we couldn’t tell you how to be a good man.

This causes problems when modern conservatism runs largely on values and ideals. The effects of this mismatch are plain when major political figures can be implicated for both legal and moral scandals and the left is still not looking ‘better’ by comparison. Accusing an American left of supercorrupt pizzagate antifa mob rule (?) should be out of the question if the American right is trying to suppress investigations into the president’s hush money payments and campaign money laundering. But somehow, it’s not.

The alt-right and similar international factions have roped in a large amount of previously unaligned or even formerly left-leaning followers because the idea of virtue is deeply appealing to people who feel like they themselves don’t have much direction, or are desperate and looking for a change. Jordan Peterson is raking in a platform from basic white guys just by telling them to clean their room and dressing it up with a cross between a professor’s intellectualism and a preacher’s sense of righteousness. And at the same time he’s teaching them all sorts of weird tinfoil hat stuff that is probably doing something to the overton window. The amount of modern right-wing reactionaries that talk about 'traditional values’ vs ‘degeneracy’ is probably related. 

For the longest time too, religion has been the right wing’s big thing and the moral sense that religion holds has almost no equal power. The #metoo movement has been powerful but it can’t match the 400 lb gorilla of Moral Guardianship and the origin of ‘social justice’ within religion. Just because religious moral purity has been stained and right-wing figures have turned out to be demons doesn’t mean the right wing’s sword of condemnation is easy to pick up.

So how can we begin to take control of the problem? Well, it would ruin our vibe to begin telling people how to be and what to emulate. We tend not to want to judge people for failing to live up to arbitrary standards. But I don’t think it would be so bad to claim and unpack things said in insult and piece together real strengths out of them. Just as a single example, a lot of marginalized people (who often happen to be left-leaning) hear ‘you’re so brave!’ a lot. It’s not really a compliment, but a weird remark that the speaker would find living as a poor person, a person of color, a fat person, a woman, as a lgbt+ person, daunting. That if we ‘try’ every day, they wouldn’t if they had to be us.

But hell, why not? Why don’t we begin looking within ourselves and finding bravery-- the virtue of being able to appraise and confront the unknown-- as something we can actively model? It’s something modern reactionaries struggle with! We have major politicians afraid to come forward about crimes, policy leaders uneasy about reallocating our resources, and pepe the frogs radicalizing over unwillingness to face their own unknown future (or just get a gf) without a white nationalism to prop up their sense of self.

Even someone on the center-left can think, ‘well, what if it’s braver to face unknowns and set aside resources to solve problems than it is to deny they exist? I would like to be a more courageous person in life.” They may even find themselves floating further left as they are introduced to more leftism in a way that makes them feel good about themselves rather than just terrible about the world itself. Many people will not take direct action if they are unsure if it fits into the story they want to tell about themselves, especially if it involves significant risk. Even if it would be the right thing to do.

Taking back narratives that put us on the defensive justifying ourselves rather than asserting our values on an offensive is critical. Beyond just keeping opposition from dominating the conversation, it wedges open spaces for new ideas in the mainstream. Without that room common moral ground creates, more daring leftist leaders are always going to seem fringe rather than aspiring to greater heights of an ideal. Who would most ordinary people decide to endorse-- a figure who demands a lot of them and identifies more negatives than anyone else, or a figure who is braver than the rest?