One of the most enlightening things I took from that book Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein, I was talking about over on the book thread is this:OrthodoxEaster wrote: Thu Jan 25, 2024 10:53 amFor years, man.Gramsci wrote: The worst shit I’ve started seeing in my leftist friends who’s primary focus as leftists is anti-NATO—ism is the positive positions they hold towards Putin, Erdoğan, Iran’s Wizards and other various ghouls.
The thinking is definitely My Enemy’s Enemy is my Friend. Which is stupid fucking politics. At best those regimes are Useful Idiots in checking US and allied imperialism but active support…
One friend started with the Canadian Conservative leader “is the only one talking about working people’s problems”… to which I pointed out “they say that about Viktor Orban”.
Anyone seeing this - what I thought was an urban myth - Horseshoe Theory playing out in their leftist friends’ circle?
I started to have an inkling of this back in 2013, during Maidan and especially after Russia invaded Crimea early the next year. Sometimes on this very forum, I'd read talking points straight from RT, WWII-era cliches about the Ukrainian sovereignty impulse being controlled by a bunch of Nazis, and the same bizarre conspiracy theories that were being peddled on the "antiglobalist" alt-right. Plus misplaced sympathy for people like Maduro in Venezuela.
I thought this was sort of fringe at the time. But it's become much worse and more widespread on the left. It's become a pet peeve of mine, along w/the tendency towards censorship and a strain of new puritanism in art and speech.
I blame a weird mixture of young people w/short memories and poor grasps of history and the complexities of world affairs; the them vs. us simplification of everything on social media; and an odd misunderstanding of socialism. In the name of stomping on internationalist elites, people who should know better end up seeming awfully provincial and too close for comfort to hardcore conservatism.
The alt-right/MAGA right sweeps up issues neglected by the popular left in America. Steve Bannon is very sharp at this. They take important things establishment Dems ignore and then warp them. Take for example the lack of pushback on Pfizer taking public money to roll out a vaccine, but then treating it like private property. Or look at the severe side effects in a tiny minority of recipients of any vaccine. While the popular left didn't want to dwell on those things because we just needed to get as many people vaccinated as possible, the psychos were able to take those little shadows and turn them into big gremlins. Unchecked problems become the opposition's opportunity.
I think there's a similar dynamic with a lot of right wing populist concerns. There was such a horrible Neo-liberal drag on the democratic party's foreign policy platform that all it takes is some opportunistic asshole to rightfully point their finger and say "look at what they've spent billions of dollars and hundreds of American lives doing" and then it's the Pied Piper saying "You see it, follow me into the MAGA army!".
