Comment on What do you think the solution to selling progressive politics to young men is ?

• MolochAlter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  IMO it depends on how much you value being morally correct vs overall effectiveness of the movement.

  And this entire thought process is why the left gets weaker every round of elections.

  Politics is about seizing and wielding power, morality has nothing to do with it.

  For one, any grifter can pretend to be more morally correct than you or I and once they get in power they will do whatever they want anyway. I would much rather side with someone who disagrees with me on some things but does so in earnest than someone who is suspiciously always somehow more moral and more correct than me or them.

  For two, morality is literally incompatible with politics, because it is downstream from the body politic.

  For instance: It is considered immoral to own slaves, today. It used to be allowed and to the mores of the time, uncontroversial.

  Then enough people who disagreed with that stance pushed to gain power and made it illegal, once that became the status quo for long enough it is now controversial to hold a position that was the default and viceversa.

  Something becomes a matter of morality once it is no longer a matter of politics.

  In practice, you don’t actually need support for all your ideas, you need enough good ideas to get you enough support that you can then push through your less popular pet issues. Even better if the pet issues themselves are popular, that’s when you get explosive successes like Trump getting re-elected by hammering the inflation button (despite anyone who knows anything about econ knowing he would be literally unable to do anything about it).

  As long as people are not actively against your pet issues they’ll re-elect you just fine, that’s how croneyism skates by unnoticed.

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  • Feathercrown@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Yes, but there is a point at whoch your movement is compromised so much that winning doesn’t matter because the common goals of the movement are no longer desirable. I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that-- we’re pretty firmly in “come on guys stop bikeshedding and work together” territory-- but it is important to know that it can swing too far the other way. That’s how we got people saying “violence is bad, you have to hear the nazi out”.

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    • MolochAlter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      there is a point at whoch your movement is compromised so much that winning doesn’t matter because the common goals of the movement are no longer desirable.

      That’s why movements should be built around goals and not allegiance/morality.

      “This is the movement to achieve X.”

      “X has been achieved.”

      “Aight, job well done, time to move on.”

      This is what the right does, and they’re eating the left alive, maybe it’s worth taking this very non-partisan strategy from their playbook?

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    • MolochAlter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      violence is bad, you have to hear the nazi out

      AKA the same provision that protects everyone with an unpopular opinion, yourself included, yes. That’s what liberal democracies do.

      The state has a monopoly on violence, you don’t get to decide who doesn’t get rights, nor do the nazis.

      The US is a bit of an exception obviously, you guys love your political violence (one could say you are built on it) and who am I to stop you, but Europe does not work that way and thank fuck for that, lol.

      So yeah you have to let the nazi speak, that doesn’t mean you can’t talk over them, mock them, goad them into striking first so the cops will crack down on them, etc.

      I’m Italian so I guarantee you I know that it’s a complex landscape to navigate, with actual fascists (the roman salute kind, not the “we’re cops and we will do our job” ““fascists””) in a lot of police strike teams, and in the current government (Thankfully I live abroad, shit’s bad at home right now), I know it’s no picnic to actually maintain a liberal society, but other countries consistently succeed, like France and the Netherlands, or the nordics.

      It takes effort and a lot of education from early on, and that the population appreciates the importance of that education and the values it is supposed to impart.

      Conversely it was “me ne frego” and the widespread apathy towards it that condemned italy to Mussolini’s rule, not civil debate.

      Moreover, allowing and embracing political violence doesn’t work when one side is already chomping at the bit and better at it than your side, but that’s a practical consideration rather than an ethical/moral one.

      Mind you this does not mean “don’t defend yourself” it means “don’t strike first”

      Embrace the Roman doctrine: we will never pick up arms first, but if forced to we will only lay them second.

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