this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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I've been called a fascist for pointing out the reality that the US left's emphasis on social rather than economic issues is alienating to a lot of blue-collar Americans who should be natural allies. Meanwhile I am an active member of my trade union and work with and talk to blue-collar people every day and know WTF I'm talking about.
I am literally a card-carrying member of organized labor and I get called a fascist for speaking the truth. It's not good. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail in this thread.
I don't think it is the left that is emphasizing social issues. They are defending Americans in response to the right's villainization of their next boogeymen to scare up more votes. The same right that then blames them for focusing on social issues. I implore those who are falling for this conservative ruse to start paying attention to what is going on rather than being taken by some of the dumbest tricks in the book.
100 percent agree.
That said, I speak only of how these things are perceived, not of how they ought to be perceived.
I am not, in any way, by pointing out this problem, claiming that it has anything like a moral or logical justification. I am simply stating that it's there, and that we need to figure out how to address it.
I know for a fact that Bernie Sanders has been able to make that leap to appealing to blue-collar Americans, for example.
The rest of the Democratic party, not so much. Rightly or wrongly, blue-collar Americans feel that they are being talked down to by the Democratic party elites.
My point is now and always has been that we need to admit this and start thinking about ways to change the way we are perceived by my fellow blue-collar Americans.
And that change, whatever it may ultimately be, can never arise from blaming people for not somehow "getting" the message.
I wouldn't say it's fascist, but the idea that we have to stop fighting for social issues to address the concerns of blue-collar workers is both insulting to blue-collar workers and deeply dangerous to the people we fight for social issues for.
The reason the American left fights for social issues primarily is because half the American left are neoliberals with no interest in economic reform of any serious kind, not because there is some arbitrary limit of how many votes can go towards socially progressive bills and economically progressive bills.
While I agree with you, your point is kind of ancillary. It's not now, nor has it ever been, my argument that the left is obliged to abandon social issues in order to court labor.
My point is that I made a simple observation of fact and was then called a fascist apologist for having done so.
I personally don't know how we reconcile the social conservatism of blue-collar Americans with the labor progressivism that so many of them obviously want.
I just think that it has to be talked about and that ignoring it or calling union activists, like myself, fascists, is not productive in any way shape or form.
There has to be a solution, and pretending like the problem doesn't exist and that people like myself are fascist-adjacent simply for having pointed it out, is complete bullshit.
I agree with that. There's no need to create unnecessary hostility between people with compatible goals.
It's insulting to blue-collar workers to push for social issues that they either disagree with or don't care about?
It's insulting to presume that blue-collar workers are incapable of agreeing with or caring about the position of treating their fellow man with basic human rights. I have no interest in playing the part of the Brothers Strasser, or of Ernst Rohm. If you think that's the way to victory, you're no ally of the oppressed. Just seeking different classes for oppressors.
They're not a monolith but the majority, or at least a substantial portion, of blue-collar workers are proudly socially conservative.
And the answer to that is to work on ways to make them, as a demographic, less socially conservative; or as individuals, to communicate the importance of such issues. Not to abandon those issues for the sake of pandering to their votes.
Unfortunately you are right. I am a proud union blue collar worker, and I have seen the same thing. The problem I've noticed is that they tend to be socially conservative due to years of fear mongering by assholes who want to exploit us. They use that fear to keep is fighting amongst ourselves instead of recognizing the real problems.
In the US the right has: Banned abortion (SCOTUS) Banned books. Made it okay to discriminate against gay people (303 creative) Banned drag shows. Is thinking about banning contraceptives.
There is no debate here. The right is banning things. The left has no equivalent bans on social issues.
3 of the last 4 GOP presidents proudly cut taxes for rich people. To distract you from that, the right is doing culture wars or wars on woke.
No doubt. I agree entirely. My point isn't to argue what should be. My point is only that stating what is an objective fact has gotten me called a fascist apologist by idiots who can't differentiate between between pointing out an aspect of reality vs actively advocating for it.
It's basically a "kill the messenger" situation.
This whole thing seems sus.
And while there's no way to know how true or not your statement it, it seems to me like you're one of these people that's economically left, but is either anti-trans, anti-muslim/immigrant or anti-some other minority group or a combination of all of them and at some point your got called out for that.
I'm not anti-anyone, apart from religious extremists.
But go ahead and think what you want, that's fine, I honestly have nothing to prove to you or anyone else.
My life speaks for itself.
Your fan fiction about the internal motivations of those who disagree with you is not rational or empirical. You're literally making stuff up right now.
If you say so dude. I'm sure you trust everything you read from random posts online and you never infer what the reality may be when someone quite obviously leaves info out or skirts around an issue?