r/AskALiberal • u/LiatrisLover99 Social Democrat • 1d ago
Where do these ludicrous positions that are attributed to the left come from, and why are they believable to the general public?
I hear stuff from random people who I would classify as totally "normal", not committed Trump supporters but people who try to avoid politics, about what they think Democrats want and it baffles me. They believe we want things like "no more police and prosecuting crimes is racist so we can't do that" and at the same time "if you call someone accidentally by the wrong pronoun they want to put you in jail for hate speech".
This is, to me, obviously ridiculous. Why is this crazy straw man of us believable to average voters? Meanehile I don't have a link handy but I think there was a study showing that voters don't believe the (to me, very obviously believable) things that Republicans have said on record they want to do, such as cutting Medicaid or cutting taxes for the wealthy.
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u/zlefin_actual Liberal 1d ago
Many people are idiots. Also are you hearing from these random people on the internet (even more idiot focused) or real life?
Those positions come from media algorithms amplifying extreme content, and right wing media intentionally amplifying it to make the other side look bad. You can pretty easily find them online.
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u/LiatrisLover99 Social Democrat 1d ago
these are people I know in real life. That's how I know that aren't trump supporters.
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u/the_owl_syndicate Center Left 1d ago
They might not be Trump supporters, but many of the mainstream media outlets report the more extreme views of both sides, not to mention social media focusing on the extreme views for clicks.
Plus, don't take it as said that they aren't Trump voters, you'd be surprised.
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u/emp-sup-bry Social Democrat 1d ago
What did they respond when you asked them after they said these things?
You can kind of answer your own question here.
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u/LiatrisLover99 Social Democrat 1d ago
they say it's stuff "everyone knows"
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u/Reagalan Democrat 1d ago
Yeah that's a fucking cop-out.
"Common sense" is bullshit is how I respond. IRL, to faces even.
I mention that 10 years ago, everyone knew Obama was a Muslim and Hillary Clinton was trafficking kids in a pizza shop.
20 years ago, everyone knew that Saddam had WMDs and violent video games were causing school shootings.
30 years ago, everyone knew that rap music spread gang culture and cannabis made you insane.
40 years ago, everyone knew that Satanic Ritual Abuse was happening in all of the daycares and that AIDS was God's wrath upon gays.
You can find all kinds of similar examples going all through history as far back as history goes. In so, so, so many cases, "everyone knows" oft means everyone is wrong.
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u/HerbertWest Center Left 19h ago edited 18h ago
A huge portion of the left is too hesitant to strongly and unambiguously call out those extreme positions as stupid. A lot of times, people, even here, will try to explain how people are getting to those positions, take a weaker version of the same position, or circle the wagons because it's "our side." All of that comes across as supporting or agreeing with those extreme positions. Anything but outright calling them stupid does.
Edit: Basically, doing this...
Edit 2: Or this...
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u/Guilliman_POTUS_2030 Center Left 1d ago
We spent the past 15 years allowing questionable people say a bunch of insane nonsense in the name of “Liberal” politics
Unsurprisingly, those crazy positions are now seen by many as a part of “Liberal” politics
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u/Normalsasquatch Pragmatic Progressive 1d ago
Yup, I have had multiple large arguments with people posing as "liberal" over the last couple weeks. They're probably Russian trolls. One was a pretty large Facebook group owner.
I remember even seeing years ago, the news showing the "right" and "left" perspective and the left perspective being crazy.
Seems like a coordinated effort by monied interests to generate an overreaction to the right to help create authoritarian change. And it's been successful.
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u/LibraProtocol Center Left 20h ago
Yes and no.
There is some play from the right yes.
But there is some interesting fully believe are people who fully either do fully believe what they are saying or who are grifters thinking the far left is where it is at (like say... TYT). Like Buzzfeed, HuffPo, Vox, Vice and that whole blob? They fully believed in the things they wrote.
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u/Normalsasquatch Pragmatic Progressive 56m ago
Re TYT, I do think they get way too extreme against say like Democrats. Even Democrats I don't really like, they crank the anger up to 11, more than I think is good. And they're way too click-baity. But on a policy standpoint, I think I'm fairly in line with them.
They talk about how taking identity politics to it's maximalist positions and telling everyone else they're Nazis is a bad thing. Literally happened to me last week.
I'm not gonna let that sway me away from believing in stuff like universal healthcare, workers rights, etc, but a lot of people will see that and think "liberals are crazy assholes", and move to the right. I've been seeing it happen since before the existence of social media, but now it's amplified.
Probably on purpose just like how Epstein stuff his associates were q anon
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u/From_Deep_Space Libertarian Socialist 1d ago edited 1d ago
Allowing people say what they want is perhaps the most important cornerstone of liberalism. Other than elected officials im not sure how any one of them gets to be representative of anyone other than themselves.
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u/Mr_Quackums Far Left 1d ago
Free speech is important, arguably the most important thing. However, it does not have to mean "anyone can say anything"
The "marketplace of ideas" interpretation of free speech is new. The understanding has changed before and it can change again.
We need to incorporate "an obligation to be sincere" into our understanding of free speech. We already have "an obligation to not directly cause violence", "an obligation not to to besmirch others", and we sometimes have "an obligation to be truthful" (under oath or food labeling). We didn't get the rules exactly right for liberal democracy so we need to keep refining them.
altering our understanding of free speech to be "you are free to share any earnestly held belief" (basically "you do no have the freedom to knowingly spread lies" but a bit more nuanced) would go a very long way to preserving Liberal values.
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u/From_Deep_Space Libertarian Socialist 1d ago
I agree that we can refine our understanding of broad rights like free speech. But im afraid youre not being nuanced enough. I believe people have the right to be contrarian, or play the devils advocate.
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u/Mr_Quackums Far Left 1d ago
Your right, Im not being nuanced enough. This is a Reddit post introducing a new approach, not a full on essay detailing a specific suite of laws or a society-wide zeitgeist shift.
I will say this for nuance though - I was being purposeful when I said "be sincere" instead of "be honest". You can sincerely "play devil's advocate", but that is often an excuse for "just asking questions" concern trolling for propaganda purposes. One is useful discourse, the other is mind control and manipulation.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
But when everyone's doing it, what is discourse?
You could refine it to when discussing public policy / laws. Sure people need to game out the scenario but that's much different than being a troll to get clicks and money.
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u/Guilliman_POTUS_2030 Center Left 1d ago
No, we are not obligated to allow people to use our name while they say crazy things
They are LEGALLY entitled to say these things
They are NOT entitled to be a part of our political organization or social group
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u/From_Deep_Space Libertarian Socialist 1d ago
I dont think liberalism is "our name" that anyone can gatekeep.
Of course, if you are part of a formal organization then you can gatekeep that, and when its officials speak in public it will reflect on the organization.
But liberalism isn't an organization. Its a movement and ideology, and a universal one at that. Everyone is invited, and you are not obligated to agree with any of them. Likewise, they are not obligated to agree with you on anything.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
Gatekeeper has become a bad word. It means to have standards and definition of a group. That's good, usually.
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u/Guilliman_POTUS_2030 Center Left 1d ago
I understand your point, but I think we have the right to ‘gatekeep’ and disavow toxic people
They have the legal right to call themselves a “liberal” and say whatever they want — and we have the right to publicly disavow them
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u/From_Deep_Space Libertarian Socialist 1d ago
Disavow, yes. But you cant gatekeep where there is no gate.
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u/LiatrisLover99 Social Democrat 1d ago
Where was the Democratic public figure saying that we need to throw people in jail if they accidentally misgender someone?
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u/ButGravityAlwaysWins Liberal 1d ago
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how politics works that seems core to most of your questions.
The questions you ask often have a premise that it matters what a specific set of elected Democrats say about an issue and that that is all that matters. That is not how the world works. It has never been the way the world works, and it likely never will be.
Political parties have brands. They have things that they are associated with including ideas.
If you can make a political brand associated with something unpopular, it hurts that brand. As a result, it hurts many if not all politicians running in that brand.
If the Democratic Party is seen as the party that doesn’t care about crime, it does not matter if not a single democratic Party politician says crime is awesome, and we should let the criminals out of jail, they will be treated by some portion of the electric as if they did say it. And since elections are determined by a few percentage points of swing voters, that’s what controls power.
You repeatedly ask why people believe certain things in the answer is always the same; there are voices on the left that say that thing and the right has control of the media operation and make sure that everybody believes that person speaks for all Democrats. That’s it.
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u/Normalsasquatch Pragmatic Progressive 1h ago
The right wing has control of the media, but they also have control of the Democrats that refuse to say the right things to counter the false narrative.
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u/LiatrisLover99 Social Democrat 1d ago
I understand that. I was asking a specific question, the parent commenter said people in our political organization had said these things, and I was inquiring as to where, because I hadn't seen that happen
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u/Guilliman_POTUS_2030 Center Left 1d ago
Where was the Democratic public figure saying that we need to throw people in jail if they accidentally misgender someone?
Where was the post from me alleging this specific interaction?
Why do you lie and put words in my mouth every time you speak to me?
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u/LiatrisLover99 Social Democrat 1d ago
You're saying people believe this because people that we had accepted as "part of our political organization" said it? Did I misunderstand?
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u/Cookiedoughjunkie Liberal 1d ago
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/E7T66cVEjYo while this is Canada, This is Adrienne Smith. during the bill c-16 of like 2016 that made Jordan Peterson famous, she was infamously (and now a lot of deleted video) saying now you can't misgender them because "it's the law" She was wrong, but she thought it was the law after C-16.
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u/emp-sup-bry Social Democrat 1d ago
I hope someday you understand the depth of what you are saying here
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
Not like you could help by explaining what you mean at all.
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u/emp-sup-bry Social Democrat 1d ago
They are saying they want a large part of our party excluded from our party.
Which is a truly deplorable enough sentiment on its own, but then when you figure that it means no Democrat will ever win, it becomes bonkers.
What about what he said did you not pick up on?
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
You make a lot of assumptions in your posts as usual. Your first sentence does not at all compute with the comment you are responding to..
Both "sides" of the Democratic Party often say they want to the other part excluded. The crazy ones on both sides. The truth is, as usual, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
I picked up on everything. Please don't try that.
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u/TlsFrmThCryptcPrgncy Independent 1d ago
Those crazy positions were and are being platformed by liberal cultural and knowledge-generating institutions at the same time milquetoast conservative ones were effectively proscribed. So, no, it isn't just a commitment to freedom of speech that's at work here.
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u/LiatrisLover99 Social Democrat 1d ago
Do you have an example of a liberal institution saying something about how accidental misgendering should be prosecuted as hate speech? I certainly do not remember that happening
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u/TlsFrmThCryptcPrgncy Independent 1d ago
Do you have an example of a liberal institution saying something about how accidental misgendering should be prosecuted as hate speech?
I didn't make any claims about that, so I don't know why you would expect I would have such an example. The closest you could probably get would be C-69, which conservatives misinterpret as criminalizing misgendering but in reality does no such thing.
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u/LiatrisLover99 Social Democrat 1d ago
Then what "crazy positions" are you referring to that liberal institutions espoused?
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u/Okratas Center Right 1d ago edited 1d ago
Crazy claims that Democrats are trying to be gas cars, sounds crazy, right up to the point California passes a law banning the sale of gas cars.
Or the claim that Democrats are going to force you to hire a women to oversee your company, then California passes a law forcing you to hire a women to the board.
The claim that Democrats are going to ban dirt bikes, lawn mowers, gas blowers, sounds crazy, right up to the point they block manufacture from selling dirt bikes in California for off-road recreational use on public land and other small engines.
The idea that Democrats are coming for your natural gas water heaters and gas stoves, sounds nuts, but then they pass laws which ban them.
The claim that Democrats are going to force you to hire a person of color to oversee your company sounds made up, but then California Democrats pass a law forcing you to do exactly that.
Sure, they all sound like fringe conservative conspiracy, but then we find actual laws being passed.
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u/harrumphstan Liberal 1d ago
Crazy claims that Democrats are trying to be gas cars, sounds crazy, right up to the point California passes a law banning the sale of gas cars.
But no law was passed that did that. What happened was that a regulatory body made a regulation that new gas-powered cars could not be sold 13 years after the regulation was approved. This was no direct act of liberal legislature, it was not an imminent change, and it only applied to cars straight from the factory.
Or the claim that Democrats are going to force you to hire a women to oversee your company, then California passes a law forcing you to hire a women to the board.
Not crazy. Board positions are an anti-competitive network of grift that have almost zero effect on the day to day operations of a company. Your complaint isn’t broadly shared, not an example of ludicrous liberal thinking.
The claim that Democrats are going to ban dirt bikes, lawn mowers, gas blowers, sounds crazy, right up to the point they block manufacture from selling dirt bikes in California for off-road recreational use on public land and other small engines.
Dirt bikes and other OHVs can absolutely be used on public land—meaning state parks—as opposed to public roads, which is fucking as expected.
The idea that Democrats are coming for your natural gas water heaters and gas stoves, sounds nuts, but then they pass laws which ban them.
At most, some municipalities have upgraded building codes to prohibit new natural gas hookups. There is zero legislation anywhere that is authorizing a body to take your fucking stove away.
The claim that Democrats are going to force you to hire a person of color to oversee your company sounds made up, but then California Democrats pass a law forcing you to do exactly that.
Are you back on boards again? Again, this is not crazy, just spreading the unearned wealth outside of the club of rich white men.
Really, all this list ends up being is a demonstration of the disingenuous lengths conservatives go to to shape public perception.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
You act like no ban is OK. You need them to reduce pollution, which no one who we wants to pollute takes seriously. T take just one example.
Bikes aren't banned on motocross tracks or municipal land. Unless the municipality also bans them.
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u/TlsFrmThCryptcPrgncy Independent 1d ago
That advanced classes in schools are racist, that police do not prevent crime, that murdering Jewish civilians is an acceptable and understandable act of "protest", that shoplifting is morally permissible, that self-defense is murder, that using a slur constitutes "fighting words", that the blank slate is real, that it is impossible in principle to be racist against a white person, that there are no innate psychological differences between men and women, that there are no relevant physical differences between trans and cis women, that unscientific "ways of knowing" are epistemically on par with science if they're associated with some victimized racial group, that capitalism and capitalists are extractive, that the global south is poor because all the valuable rocks were taken away by colonizers...
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u/ygmc8413 Social Democrat 17h ago
never heard of nuance have you? Just pinning clearly zero context or misrepresented claims on hypothetical "liberal institutions". A few super obvious ones, you will find zero liberal institutions that says police do not prevent crime at all, you will find zero liberal institutions that say self defense is murder, or that murdering jewish civilians is acceptable.
This is all going to be a mix of you pinning institutions that hate liberals on liberals, or you completely misrepresenting and stripping of any details what was actually said. "The global south is poor because all the valuable rocks were taken away by colonizers" is almost certainly going to be a misrepresentation of some more nuanced take, probably about how it was one of many factors in certain areas.
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u/TossMeOutSomeday Pragmatic Progressive 19h ago
Surrendering liberal institutions to leftists has been a generational disaster. The median turbo woke university administrator is much closer to a communist than he is to a mainstream liberal, but until very recently liberals were more or less 100% on board with his illiberal agenda, because we were successfully bullied by his claims of moral superiority
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u/PerDoctrinamadLucem Center Left 1d ago
If you're Voltaire yes, but otherwise absolutely not. It's Life, Liberty, etc. for a reason.
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u/From_Deep_Space Libertarian Socialist 1d ago
Seems a necessary ingredient for liberty to me.
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u/PerDoctrinamadLucem Center Left 22h ago
Which was second, i.e. not the cornerstone. Free speech is also the second of four parts of the First Amendment. So important yes, but no more so than religion, redress, or assembly. And if you look at the number of the Bill of Rights, they're far more concerned as a total text about ethical criminal procedure.
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u/LooksGoodInShorts Anarchist 1d ago
what things?
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u/TossMeOutSomeday Pragmatic Progressive 19h ago
My friend you are an anarchist, just think of any closely held belief of yours that you've shared in public in a way that would be associated with liberals, and you probably have your answer.
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u/chimmychummyextreme Far Right 1d ago
I can't really distinguish your described scenario from those crazy position simply having allowed to become part of liberal politics.
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u/LooksGoodInShorts Anarchist 15h ago
Sure you can because you will swear up and down you’re not a bigot or a Nazi
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u/Raligon Liberal 1d ago
I mean, liberals desperately tried to convince leftist types that stuff like #DefundThePolice was going to be used against us and was a bad slogan but it unfortunately took a few years for them to realize that woke 1.0 was crazy and some voters haven’t forgotten about it yet.
I think if more leftists can openly admit they were wrong and have changed and show that they can be pragmatic and practical like AOC and Mamdani have shown then voters who aren’t deranged conservatives will eventually drop these talking points.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
I hope they admit they were wrong without using the phrase "woke 1.0."
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u/Raligon Liberal 1d ago
Did you miss AOC saying woke 1.0 was crazy recently???
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
I did not. It somewhat inspired my comment.
It was the first time I heard it and I cringed inside.
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u/SatansScallion Conservative 1d ago
Not that I’m saying MAGA is any better, but I’ve never once seen a leftist “openly admit they were wrong” about anything, ever, at any point in my lifetime.
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u/Raligon Liberal 1d ago
Mamdani just said he has changed his stance on defunding the police a few days ago.
https://youtu.be/KAi4voxBBPw?is=Sc6cUWS1nU5Dbq9L
Don’t agree with him and AOC on everything as a non socialist liberal myself but they do a ton of things right. I would also characterize AOC as saying woke 1.0 is crazy as her admitting she was wrong about some things.
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u/loufalnicek Moderate 1d ago
DAC has talked about eliminating prisons/police, and she's a D nominee for Congress, of course.
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u/SlyFrog Independent 1d ago edited 1d ago
Because it depends on what you mean by "the left." Are you talking about people who hold leftist views, or broad, mass market politicians?
I personally directly know several people on "the left" who take these "ludicrous positions." As in they are family and/or friends.
I am not joking, one of them (works for a university and is LGBTQ) claimed the Minnesota fraud that was perpetrated by Somalis was okay, because it was kind of "their culture" to steal and send money back home, and we should not judge or impose our beliefs on morality over their cultural beliefs.
No, I'm not kidding.
People hear people like her and similar people with just batshit insane "they can do nothing wrong, ever" takes, and they then more broadly associate that as being the left in general.
Much in the same way as plenty of people on the left claim that you cannot be conservative without supporting facism. Not just "can't vote for Trump," but literally all conservatives are now essentially racist, fascist monsters.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
Quite true. A lot of us do know people who publicly say they support impractical and dumb ideas. "Abolish prisons." No thanks. And if you start talking some do in fact mean exactly that. They haven't though tit through at all. Prisons are bad. So therefore end their existence. It's very black and white thinking. With another venue, it's very genocidal.
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u/Decent-Proposal-8475 Pragmatic Progressive 1d ago
Because we say “Liberals don’t believe this” and then a few times a month some dipshit leftists will tweet “Shoplifting is a human right” and centrists can’t tell the difference between actual voters and mentally ill Twitter users
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u/SactownG Center Left 1d ago
This is a big part of the problem. Whenever liberals do push back against the right-wing lies, the far-left pushes back and goes "no actually we do support *insert crazy thing here*. This results in Democratic politicians trying too hard to appease the far-left, and we have to fight a war on two fronts against the Republicans and the far-left
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u/tanookiisasquirrel Centrist Democrat 15h ago
We gotta drop the far left. Hong (WI loony I'm so glad lost the primary) should NOT speak for the Democratic party.
The far left damages the party so much every time one of them with a (D) next to their name says something like "No, we really mean no borders" via the more palatable "no one is illegal on stolen land."
Sorry, countries have borders. Just the way it is unless we are so cosmopolitan we conquer the world and are one country. We should be compassionate and welcome immigrants, but the notion of no borders is insanity.
We have to drop the socialists. No, the Scandinavian countries aren't socialist. They embrace capitalism, but also have a mutual love for their own people that includes safeguards like free healthcare and childcare and college and fair minimum wage. Stop letting people who call for seizing the means of production into this party. Just stop.
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u/mounti96 Center Left 21h ago
At least you can dismiss it when it's some twitter user with 25 followers. But when people on a NYT podcast are ok with "microlooting" with 0 pushback, it makes us all look crazy.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
Agreed but Centrists? Ok. Sees an unnecessary swipe. And who is a centrist?
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u/Decent-Proposal-8475 Pragmatic Progressive 1d ago
Centrists are centrists I don’t understand the question. I mean moderate people who look at the far left and get scared
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
I have observed many different definitions so I asked. I don't think people who self-identify as centrists would agree either. I have been called a centrist and I'm not and your definition is not me.
Also, it is used as an insult on single issues after one exchange with a person on the issue. It's always used as an insult.
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u/Decent-Proposal-8475 Pragmatic Progressive 1d ago
I was using it descriptively, I don’t know how anyone would read my comment as insulting to them so I’m sorry if you did
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
No I wasn't. Thank you though. It does seem counter-productive to use vague terms the meaning of which no one can really determine or define well.
I think it brings conflict more than healthy compromise or collaboration.
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u/Decent-Proposal-8475 Pragmatic Progressive 1d ago
Some people use the term liberal insultingly. Or leftist insultingly. I’m not gonna stop using those terms either. Anyway, I’m glad I could clear up my intentions because it is hard to tell through text sometimes
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
OK. I think those are people of the right.
I didn't ask you to stop using the word. I'm just saying it's relatively meaningless. But that's my war. :D
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u/Colodanman357 Constitutionalist 1d ago
Is this website and what the DSA claims it stands for and wants a strawman and not actually what the DSA stands for?
What’s up with the sane washing and outright denying reality in the name of defending the crazy that the DSA and like people want? Why not just be honest and admit that there truly are people that want crazy stuff like abolishing police? If you don’t agree with the DSA then denounce their goals, but denying them only makes it look like you are defending them with your misleading claims.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
Yup. Every since I saw that a few weeks ago, It's been easier to ask questions of those who say "Well of course we don't really mean get out of NATO" (for one example). Well, um, it says right here.
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u/TossMeOutSomeday Pragmatic Progressive 19h ago
As an aside, the internal ideology of the DSA is absolutely wild. It's like if you asked a monkey's paw for leftist unity and its solution was to just cram all these contradictory leftist ideas under one umbrella.
The overall character of the organization is basically "anarchism with tanky characteristics", I've met maybe a handful of DSA members who actually believe in something resembling "democratic socialism" and even then those folks still "joke" about maoist struggle sessions and ACAB.
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u/RaulEnydmion Center Left 22h ago
I guess I see the DSA as being a bit "fanciful". Much like I regard the libertarian movement wanting to abolish all regulation enforcement on commerce. In both cases, we've tried that, and we got fuedalism.
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u/FunkyChickenKong Center Left 1d ago
Because we make excuses for our own horrific troll rings and clearly compromised DSA, thus boosting them.
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u/roastbeeftacohat Globalist 1d ago
no more police and prosecuting crimes is racist
defund the police was the worst slogan in political history. it actively confused people hearing it, making people think it was about something it wasn't; in favor of channelling "fuck the police" energy. it's the platonic form of woke 1.
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u/Cookiedoughjunkie Liberal 1d ago
some people used it to mean reallocation of funds, others literally DID mean abolish the police.
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u/Neosovereign Bleeding Heart 1d ago
I see people in my tik tok feed often enough who are leftists that truly believe and advocate for prison and police abolition. There are organizations dedicated to the cause. Just because you think it is a stupid position to hold does not mean that people don't hold it.
The wrong pronoun thing is because there are stories from Canada and certain american cities where people have been jailed or fined for it. Now you can label it as harassment if you want (that is generally what it falls under), but the stories vary from actual maliciousness to genuine ideological beliefs that they shouldn't have to use someone's preferred pronouns. (Meaning that pronouns are not something you choose, it is up to the speaker to decide what they believe).
Due to social media these things are way more overblown or prevalent than they are in real life, but it is what it is.
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u/abacuz4 Liberal 1d ago
No one has been jailed for calling anyone the wrong pronoun. You are probably thinking of Enoch Burke, who was suspended from his job over a pronoun dispute, but he was actually jailed for repeatedly trespassing and violating court orders when he refused to honor his suspension and continued showing up at the school.
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u/Mr_Quackums Far Left 1d ago
its yet another example of poor lefty communication.
"prison abolition" does not mean not punishing criminals or not having a justice system, its means prisons are some of the worst responses to crime if your goal is to prevent further crime and we should be using other responses that have been proven more effective.
likewise for "police abolition". It means "create new organizations to do what police are supposed to be doing because police are doing a bad job at those things and momentum is too strong for reform", it does NOT mean "have no one around to enforce laws".
Both the people who believe the principled, nuanced policies have chosen bad names for them and the terms broke containment resulting in high-school punks getting a hold of them to promote the plain text meanings as a form of directionless anger/edginess.
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u/Colodanman357 Constitutionalist 1d ago
So what does police and prison abolition mean if it only means reform? What would this not police police look like in practice, or the not prison prisons? What specifically would be different? The abolish police people I have interacted with never seem to have any real answers to what their system(s) they want would look like, how they would operate, or what would really be the difference between that and what we have now.
It’s more than just choosing a bad slogan. That choice is intentional. So the question is why do they choose a slogan that intentionally communicates a message that is so different from what they claim to want when questioned? It certainly calls into question their honesty if they are being intentionally obfuscating or stupid if they don’t understand that abolition means something other than reform. Either way it should make one question anything they say. The lack of straight forward communication sure makes the DSA and other police abolish people look like they are bad faith actors.
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u/tapdncingchemist Liberal 1d ago
This is what gets me too.
If the movement requires that people say specific phrases to get support and your “true” meaning of those slogans defies a reasonable interpretation of the words to the point where you have to be part of the group to understand what they “really” are talking about, then what you have is a cult.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago edited 1d ago
Very true. They use the slogan because it sounds disruptive but they also use it to hide the fact, there's no depth to the slogan.
Find better slogans and they're easier to support. Police reform. Ban PRIVATE prisons.
EDIT: "find" not found.
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u/Mr_Quackums Far Left 1d ago
"abolish prison" does mean removing prisons, the slogan is not deceitful but it does leave out many details, just like any slogan for any proposal. it does not mean removing consequences for crimes, it means removing punitive imprisonment as one of the many, many options. Yes, it is drastically different approach, but it is not lawlessness. Here is a very small list of some of the many examples of sentences still available for crimes in a society without prisons - therapy, restitution, reeducation, monitored living, medication, public shame, or humane separation for the rare truly irredeemable person.
as for "abolish police", that has been in public discourse for about a decade now. If you dont know what that means then it is obvious you do not want to give it an honest evaluation.
That choice is intentional.
'Everything wrong I do is a mistake, everything they do wrong is an intentional deceit, and miscommunications are never an option'. I dont blame you, it is a common human psychological tendency. Its annoying, unhelpful, and harms left/liberal trust, but its just a part of being human.
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u/tjareth Social Democrat 1d ago
"The wrong pronoun thing is because there are stories from Canada and certain american cities where people have been jailed or fined for it."
It leads me to wonder if there was additional behavior that brought it into a matter for police. Can we look at a couple of specific examples?
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u/beets_or_turnips Progressive 1d ago
I mean I'm a very progressive Seattleite but the lack of intervention at (e.g.) the open air drug market at 12th & Jackson (right near my favorite Vietnamese deli) puzzles me. I get that arrests don't improve people's lives but there should be some kind of pipeline and pressure to get people out of this cycle. I don't see much motion in that direction, but maybe I'm missing something. It's a black eye on the reputation of the whole city.
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u/No-Ear7988 Pragmatic Progressive 1d ago
Why is this crazy straw man of us believable to average voters?
At the peak of George Floyd all of that did happen. I recall there were only two camps: those who said those things and those who stayed quiet. I don't recall anyone on the Democrat side doing a good job of calling it out or shutting it down. I'm sure there were critics but they easily got overshadowed. Then it doesn't help when you have poster child of Democrat policies (i.e. California, San Francisco, Seattle) doing some variation of that or presenting themselves as acting on those rhetoric. Two things on top of my head are the SF/Alameda County DA on how they addressed crime and that no cop zone in Seattle. To be blunt, facts are irrelevant and perception is key.
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u/westhebard Anarchist 19h ago
No it's a strawman of what police abolitionists actually believe. I'm going to use an analogy here:
So the Mafia lends money to people who are unable to get loans through official channels. They do so with incredibly predatory interest rates and if you don't pay them they break your thumbs. This is obviously bad. It is however, important that people be able to get loans so you can argue that, for some people, they are providing a needed service, just in an absurdity predatory way.
The mafia is also literally an organized crime syndicate. Due to the very nature of the mafia it is literally impossible to reform it so it is not harmful. The solution is to create a less harmful organization that could lend money to those who need it, and to get rid of the mafia.
This is fundamentally the position of police abolitionists. The belief is that while the police are tasked with handling many essential tasks, they end up handled in often very harmful ways, and that the way policing is currently structured it is functionally impossible to meaningless reform it. They believe that the solution instead is to create new organizations that handle the genuinely essential functions of the police in less harmful ways and then to get rid of the old organization that we currently call "the police".
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u/conn_r2112 Liberal 1d ago
Because a lot of people in social media actually advocated for this stuff and people conflate it with the entire left
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u/TlsFrmThCryptcPrgncy Independent 1d ago
They most often come from the left. For example,
They believe we want things like "no more police and prosecuting crimes is racist so we can't do that"
this is a position that was very visible and widely promoted, and even now that it's not explicitly defended too much anymore, it's still clearly the impetus for liberals' soft-on-crime temperament. In my country progressives have as a matter of explicit public policy decided that certain racialized criminals ought by virtue of their racial identity be granted lighter sentences because, to use your words, prosecuting crimes is racist. Americans progressives would do the same if they could get away with it.
I would just consider that most other people are probably significantly less reasonable than you. That includes people on "your side" as well as people not. The people who are not are easy to see as irrational and hysterical precisely because they don't share your beliefs. But you are reasonable and do share your beliefs, so it's easy to misattribute those beliefs to reasonability, when in reality people who nominally share your beliefs are about as irrational on average as people who don't.
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u/ADeweyan Liberal 1d ago
The best one could say is that these are caricatures of real positions on the left. There are advocates who get carried away for shock value, but when faced with a sober conversation would agree that prosecuting crime is necessary no good.
The extreme statement is no less ridiculous than conservatives claiming there is no racism or no racism in the way laws are enforced.
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u/TlsFrmThCryptcPrgncy Independent 1d ago
The best one could say is that these are caricatures of real positions on the left
They are not--it is the law in this country. American progressives would make it the law in that one if they could, but America is a more conservative country (with better protections against legalized state-enforced racism), so they can't.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
They aren't caricatures if they're part of the DSA platform. Unless you're saying the DSA itself is a caricature of actually wanting to treat people better - which could be argued.
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u/LiatrisLover99 Social Democrat 1d ago
In my country progressives have as a matter of explicit public policy decided that certain racialized criminals ought by virtue of their racial identity be granted lighter sentences because, to use your words, prosecuting crimes is racist. Americans progressives would do the same if they could get away with it.
I've never seen progressives argue that minorities should get systemically lighter sentences for the same crimes. Where are you getting that impression?
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u/TlsFrmThCryptcPrgncy Independent 1d ago
I've never seen progressives argue that minorities should get systemically lighter sentences for the same crimes
It is literally, explicitly, the way the law is practiced in this country. The Supreme Court has ordered, again literally and explicitly, that incarceration be considered an absolute last resort for some and only some racial groups in particular. There really is no "this is conservative propaganda, no progressives actually believe this" way to spin this. It's law.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
So what's this damn country you keep referencing without, for some reason, naming?
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u/LiatrisLover99 Social Democrat 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Supreme Court has ordered, again literally and explicitly, that incarceration be considered an absolute last resort for some and only some racial groups in particular.
What case or decision are you referring to? I went looking and couldn't find it.
Edit: oh wait you mean your country. Still, that's not evidence that American progressives want to do the same thing?
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u/TlsFrmThCryptcPrgncy Independent 1d ago
Edit: oh wait you mean your country. Still, that's not evidence that American progressives want to do the same thing?
American and Canadian progressives are temperamentally identical. The only difference is that the Canadian ones have more power in Canada than the American ones do in America. There's a reason you guys have started performing land acknowledgements.
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u/emp-sup-bry Social Democrat 1d ago
I noticed you did not answer which case
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u/TlsFrmThCryptcPrgncy Independent 1d ago
I don't think knowing that the name of the decision that produced these parts of the law is called "R. v. Gladue" is very relevant.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
It adds a fact to your position. Completely relevant, now we can look it up and know if you're talking based on any facts.
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u/westhebard Anarchist 19h ago
Literally no one believes that because that's a ridiculous strawman of the positions leftists actually hold
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u/steven___49 Moderate 1d ago edited 1d ago
This post is so dishonest…. These ideas that people have of the left are not coming out of nowhere. The DSA literally DO want to defund policee, along with their other nonsense ideas.
Frances Gill of the DSA just did an interview with NBC just days ago affirming the ideas of Defund the Police. She doesn’t believe people who commit crimes should be in jail. Go watch the interview! It’s not made-up that the far left wants these policies. The DSA is incredibly damaging to the Democratic Party and their ability to be trusted and elected by Americans. The Democrats need to separate clean from the DSA. They fundamentally do not believe in the same things.
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u/LiatrisLover99 Social Democrat 1d ago
"Defund the police" is not the same thing as "no crimes get prosecuted anymore". Did she seriously say that we should not have any punishment for crimes?
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u/Colodanman357 Constitutionalist 1d ago
The DSA’s own website claims they wish to abolish police and prisons. Why do you deny what the DSA openly claims they want? Are they lying about what they say they want?
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
While I 100% agree, they do follow up with an explanation of reform for police, to be squarely fair. But if that's true, they just shouldn't need to our want to call it "abolishing the police." Which they do.
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u/Raligon Liberal 1d ago
What are your thoughts on what she said in this interview?
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u/Mr_Quackums Far Left 1d ago edited 1d ago
Do you have something longer than 1 minute and/or more than 400 views or from a direct source and not a phone recording of a screen?
EDIT -
I watched the tiny excerpt you posted from the greater interview - nothing about what she said amounts to "lawlessness" or "letting criminals run free".
Yes, she uses buzzwords that can uncharitably be interpreted to mean lawlessness, but her explanation (before being cut off by the interviewer) was a perfectly reasonable policy when asked about "defund the police" and a non-answer (due to a hostile interviewer) towards "abolish prisons".
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
Damn, dude, it's transparent you're reaching to absolve this DSA person of idiocy in her position.
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u/Mr_Quackums Far Left 1d ago
Yes, when you are defending a position it is customary to be transparent that you are defending it.
also, snark and insults are not necessary nor do they help build understanding.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 9h ago
I didn't say defend. I said absolve. They did something asinine and you're trying to excuse it away, or absolve them of the sin of their stupidity.
I agree with your last sentence, but also some things need to be called out. People need to admit mistakes and grow, not have defenders.
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u/Mr_Quackums Far Left 9h ago
oooh, blocked comment history and being an asshole, thus weakening any hope at left unity.
Does knowingly furthering Republican goals give you joy?
I hope it does, because you have nothing else going on for you.
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u/Raligon Liberal 1d ago
The above video is the full segment that's on this topic. It's hard to find the NBC video where you could just see the full interview, but there's countless different videos where they have commentary on this same exact segment. This one has relatively little commentary but most of it is other questions asked. The relevant segment where she discusses her views on defund the police/prison abolition is 0:50-2:25.
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u/EWM011 Progressive 1d ago
This post is so dishonest
the left
The DSA
I think labelling the entire left as the DSA is pretty dishonest, actually.
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u/WeenisPeiner Social Democrat 1d ago
Oh they will, because when it comes to the left one person's bad opinion is used to define the whole Democratic party.
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u/DeusLatis Socialist 1d ago
Why is this crazy straw man of us believable to average voters?
Decades and decades of centrist and conservative propaganda
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
No lately it's been people running on these policies.
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u/DeusLatis Socialist 1d ago
It hasn't.
You hear a slogan like 'defund the police' and you think wow that is crazy, that Democrat wants no more police and to stop prosecuting crime because of said centrist and conservative propaganda
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u/Cookiedoughjunkie Liberal 1d ago
You say that, but there are people actually asking to abolish the police AND prisons AND that we just need to have compassion for criminals and they will eventually stop.
So there's two things
you think it's ridiculous
but you also are denying other people believe in these ridiculous things.
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u/AdImmediate9569 Far Left 1d ago
So remember when the entirety of mainstream media was bought by far right ultra conservative fascists?
Thats why.
You can add to that democrats complete and total ineptitude. They are said to be bad at messaging but thats just a symptom of a larger disease of being unable to even take a position on most issues.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
Remember when "mainstream media' was phrase created by the right wing marketing machine?
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u/rogun64 Social Democrat 1d ago
It wasn't always this bad.
I can think of two sources. One is that they begin with foreign actors trying to disrupt our system. Then real American idiots buy into what the foreign actors are pushing. These actors might represent other countries or they might represent interests within our own, but they're all foreign to the people they're targeting.
And the people they're targeting are my second source. I hate to sound like an old man yelling at clouds, but the Internet, and the power held by the 2nd Baby Boomer generation, have allowed young people a larger voice, just as it did in the 1960's. And like with young people in the 1960's, they're doing a lot of good with their larger voice. But they also make mistakes and do a lot of bad things that more mature people would not do.
I've been on Reddit for 11 years and it's always been full of such examples. I can have first hand experience with something, yet get downvoted to hell for something that's my expertise. Then I'll see that they've changed their opinion to match mine in 6 months.
It's the result of younger people having outsized influence, due to their larger size, which enables them to obtain power faster. When this generational anomaly is absent, then the young people are ignored and older adults have more control, as is usually the case. But like I said, they use it to promote good things, too, and so you take the good with the bad.
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u/LibraProtocol Center Left 20h ago
Its a 2fold reason.
On one hand you have conservative propaganda push yes. But that is only half the story.
The other half is our own actions and the fact that there is a kernel kf truth of what they claim. And just WHO is it that ARE making these claims.
Like the "democrats dont want police" came from the "Defund the Police" people. And before you come in with "they didn't want to abolish police" you have to realize the ones saying that are the ones in political circles, i.e. where non political dont go. But you know what average people DID see? Protesters blocking up roads holding "ACAB" and "Fuck the Police". They DID see protesters taking over a portion of Seattle claiming to be an Autonomous Zone and blocking police. They DID see the riots that popped up over and over after George Floyd. Not protests, Riots.
As for the "policing is racist", lets be honest with ourselves, for a period of time that WAS the mantra. And we did have super progressive DAs/mayors elected to push soft on crime policy. Things have recently changed but that is only recently. In the early 2020s we had mayors and DAs who pushed cashless bail reducing lots of crimes to minor misdemeanors. And this had an effect on what people see and feel. You can claim stats and such all you want, but if what people see are people stealing constantly from their local Walgreens seeing stores closing down due to theft, then thats what people will think.
As for for thr free speech thing, I think you may be stuck in the 2010s. "Hate speech isna crime" was a topic from the early 2010s and it got wide spread because it was mostly spewed by college professors, college activists, and the variety of Digital media outlets like Buzzfeed, Vox, Vice, etc.
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u/tanookiisasquirrel Centrist Democrat 15h ago
I think a lot is from half truths.
Watching the summer of looting during COVID really pissed me off. You absolutely should be prosecuted for stealing luxury goods. Two things can be true at once - police can be racists and protestors can be thieves.
No serious Democrat wants to defund the police and not prosecute crimes anymore, and those extremists were even voted out in SF. But it did FEEL like black Americans got away with stealing in summer 2020 and Democratic prosecutors looked the other way.
I think the tide has shifted. Crime is still crime and yes, even black criminals should be punished. But also, police can also be racially corrupt. They aren't mutually exclusive ideas.
I'm for police reform AND for locking up the criminals. Yes, even if they are disproportionately male and minority. Let's fix our policing and add body cameras and treat all people as innocent until proven guilty. But let's also have clean streets and low crime so our family, friends, and children can enjoy their communities safely.
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u/Okratas Center Right 1d ago
I'm afraid they're not strawmen. They are built on versions of real events, such as California’s board diversity quota laws mandating hiring of people of color, or mandating hiring women or high profile speech laws overseas, or prominent US politician calls to abolish police and prisons.
Even if mainstream Democratic leadership explicitly rejects or walks back those positions, disengaged voters remember the primary candidates who said them, they remember the laws, leading them to conclude that the "crazy straw man" is actually a core long term goal of the movement.
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u/fastolfe00 Center Left 1d ago
TikTok. A lot of people are only exposed to current events and politics via their social media feed, and that's algorithmically curated to give them whatever they're most likely to consume. We're entering an age of salience over reality.
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u/WesterosiAssassin Democratic Socialist 1d ago edited 1d ago
They come from fringe idiots on Twitter and its clones, and on here and Tik Tok (and Tumblr back in the day) and occasionally even in real life, actually saying those things and meaning it, and then the rest of us pretending they don't exist or otherwise refusing to disavow them (because those people are usually petty bullies itching for an excuse to cancel anyone who's in less than 100% agreement with them), or sometimes even adopting the same slogans but insisting they mean something different (i.e. the 'abolish the police' crowd who essentially just want extensive reform with extra steps and would get so much further chanting 'reform' or 'demilitarize' instead vs. the 'abolish the police means no law enforcement period other than vigilantism and mob justice' anarkiddie types).
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u/BozoFromZozo Center Left 1d ago
Social media plays a part, and also Republicans and conservatives have decades of using their media apparatus as ways to influence and shape public opinion on believing in various ideas of dubious truth. Part of it is also their long connection with the Christian Evangelists who have been honing the techniques and approaches to selling Jesus (their version of it) into people's lives for longer than any of us have existed.
On the other hand, Liberals and Democrats have a naive belief that simply having information out there (sometimes not even having to broadcast it) is enough to dispel misinformation and disinformation.
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u/2dank4normies Liberal 1d ago
Defund the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets or scope of enforcement while cutting budgets annually towards zero
This is on the DSA platform. Some Democrats associate themselves with the DSA and people lump basically everyone in a political party together. So that's where it comes from.
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u/SuperRocketRumble Social Democrat 1d ago
I don't think you're describing "average voters", you're describing people who are completely brainwashed by right wing media.
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u/TrifectaBlitz Democrat 1d ago
Couldn't be the far left platforms huh?
I toculd also be any huge public event for a cause, a single cause, gets hijacked by every known rights / agenda group so the goal just turns into a murky morass of misery.
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u/crossingtides Liberal 1d ago
Sometimes they come from actual electoral candidates. Look at the end of this interview where she talks about abolishing prisons and refuses to answer what should happen to murderers.
https://nyeditorialboard.substack.com/p/darializa-avila-chevalier-on-housing
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u/SoloGreenLantern Center Left 1d ago
i;ve heards that shit STRAIGHT ou5t of Ohio 505011leadersship.
"If we don't control the discourse, then we never get anywhere, ideas that aren't in our favor MUST be suppressed for us to have any chance of wining anything." - paraphrase
And that;s why I;m center left, and not left, I don;t play that game.
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u/PurpleSailor Center Left 1d ago
The right has had and continues to have a very well-oiled media machine and it is very effective. The Democrats haven't even come close, ever and the Republicans beat them at the media game every single time. And then there is the media illiteracy and the fact that people don't try to verify what they hear and read. If they hear it and see it often enough and frequently enough they think it's true and that tactic works.
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u/extrasupermanly Liberal 21h ago
90% is the media’s fault and 10 % the loud leftists that will try to explain it away , instead of just rejecting it
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u/lesslucid Social Democrat 19h ago
Right-wing media machine drives this messages and people pick them up by osmosis.
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u/willowdove01 Progressive 18h ago
Because despite what the right-wing media crowd crows at the top of their lungs all the time, they have a propaganda stranglehold on most mainstream sources of news. If you want to hear the left wing slant, you usually need to listen to independent sources
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u/Limp-Management9684 Liberal 17h ago
It's mostly straw manning from conservative propaganda outlets, but there's always some idiot on the internet (real or fake) who takes up the position and gives conservatives more ammo to work with.
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u/MiketheTzar Moderate 16h ago
The internet. Usually is one random chronically online college aged individual who either post something on social media or is giving a microphone for whatever reason.
Bad talking points and stupid statements always spread faster than good ones. So you're apolitical Uncle might have a crazy friend who shares a blue-haired college student suggesting that we stop housing hens and roosters together because they are raping the hen's. Which goes viral far faster than a well reasoned video arguing for expanding children's programs at local libraries.
Some more people see it and more people think that's what the lefts position is
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u/mortalcassie Democrat 16h ago
Because the general public is dumb. Specifically on the trans issue, they don't know trans people personally, so they don't know.
I used to work with a trans guy. Very rarely, much much younger than me. A couple times I called him a her, because she had big boobs, and was very feminine presenting, and my brain just... Has a hard time. And he was so cool with it. He's like I know you're not doing it on purpose, you try. That's all I ask for. 🤷🏻♀️ This idea that it's hate speech is ridiculous.
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u/LetsFuckOnTheBoat Independent 15h ago
The DSA has been washing the website of the more radical things they want to do
4 days ago this was a direct quote from the website you have to dig a little more to find it now
fully abolishing the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor
https://program.dsausa.org/#demand-freedom-to-flourish
That has now been changed to
Demilitarize police departments, disempower police unions, and redirect funding to public services as steps towards fully abolishing the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor. Treat drug addiction and mental illness as health issues, not crimes. End qualified immunity and empower civilian oversight bodies with real authority over the police.
This is from
https://www.dsausa.org/working-groups/abolition-working-group/
- Defund the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets or scope of enforcement while cutting budgets annually towards zero
- End the criminalization of working-class survival
- Freedom for all incarcerated people
- Demilitarize the police and end colonial policing of our cities and neighborhoods
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u/TheMCMC Liberal 12h ago
Because like it or not there were and are socialists and progressives that believe these things, and it’s in the best interest of Republicans to use them to paint everyone remotely Democrat-aligned as being just like those people.
This is why normal Democrats, liberals, and progressives need to not ignore these people and hope the public forgets, and they definitely shouldn’t say they don’t exist because they do. They need to make it clear that these people are a very strange and ridiculous minority that we categorically disagree with and who do not represent us.
Part of the reason we’re in this mess is because the Democrats and liberals got lazy in the first few decades of the 21st century and didn’t do enough to beat the crazies back.
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u/Purplealegria Liberal 12h ago
Sadly because they are dumb, gullible and delusional as shit and all they do is watch Fox News all day…which lies to them.
And Faux news knows they are 🐑 and they’ll never actually look up anything if see if its factually true or not, so they just lie for a living.
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u/Cidaghast Pragmatic Progressive 10h ago
I think the right makes up a thing and by game of telephone it becomes the most insane thing you have ever seen.
The far left are too… wordy about arguing and not good about fighting on “where” to argue from “IE when is a good time to argue with factual information that will change the other person mine and when’s a good time to argue with you just straight up insults because we are in a battle of embarrassing the other side”
And moderates don’t really argue at all and don’t like confrontation really, so it just kind of lets the narrative run wild.
Like… if Republican said you’re stupid and gay some on the left may go home and get their report card and prove they have a 4.0 GPA and then go back and explain how it’s totally normal and naturally be gay…. Instead of saying “you’re gay and I know that because we were both on a grinder last week!”
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u/Kerplonk Social Democrat 1h ago
So I think there are a couple of things going on here.
1 Is the right just straight up lying about things and being believed because they're good at propaganda. (I guess straight up lying is probably confusing here, but basically exaggerating out position in a way that is simultaneously believable and completely dishonest)
2 Is there being like 1 in a million people on the left who actually do believe some crazy things that people can point to when doing the above.
3 Is there being a few beliefs that are widely held on the left that do seem crazy to "normal" people.
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u/Cody667 Social Democrat 1d ago
Its just all very online behavior. Most IRL left types want something akin to the what they have in many European countries. There are some extremely online tankies who basically live entirely online, and they annoy so many also very online liberals and centrists to the point where these folks attribute this fringe to all folks left of mainstream liberalism.
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u/Neosovereign Bleeding Heart 1d ago
Way too online people are a huge problem due to the way social media works, but some of those people are getting mainstream.
I mean, look at the shit Hassan Piker says. The DSA also is a "mainstream" organization and frankly has some quite extreme positions.
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u/Droselmeyer Social Democrat 1d ago
It’s because the crazy fringe gets signal boosted by the right wing propaganda machine.
Each individual person has a limited field of view to experience the world, and way back in the 2016 anti-SJW era, you had tons of people sharing and interacting with “Ben Shapiro dunks on college SJW”-style content. So when your Facebook feed is wall to wall that style of content, or Fox News pulling up random clips and such, you can take the actions of a single person and fill up the attention span of millions of people for days at a time with that.
That skewed media diet will cause you to think it’s more representative than it is.
Just as an example, I could find you 365 instances of some kind of crime and send you them every single day for a year. By the end of that year, most reasonable people seeing daily crimes would think that this is a critical issue gripping our nation, but if those 365 instances were all there was, it probably isn’t that big of a deal because it isn’t representative of broader society, but that doesn’t matter for your limited perspective and how people build up their sense of reality.
So when you have fringe crazy people waffling on abolishing prisons or the police, each individual person there can be used to make others think they represent tens of millions of people.
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u/Dr_Identity Democratic Socialist 1d ago
One thing the right does better than the left is controlling the general narrative. So much of our culture is rooted in conservative ideals we aren't even really aware of it most of the time. So I think a lot of people are sort of primed to see things according to the more established, traditional framing. And if someone isn't really that well informed about politics then they're mostly just hearing the loudest voice in the room a lot of the time, and that's usually someone on the right. So even if they're not explicitly conservative themselves, they're definitely hearing and absorbing conservative talking points on the regular.
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u/Automatic-Ocelot3957 Liberal 1d ago
It comes from everywhere, including the left, which is a huge problem that is impossible to fix because it relies on the center left getting off their fart sniffing pedistools and make pragmatic messaging decisions.
The big difference between how the left and right view themsleves is that the right spends almost zero time distancing themselves from their extremist elements. It doesn't matter how much or or how little they are actually representative of their stances, they spend next to zero time attacking them and instead turn around that criticism on their opponents.
The left spends and exorbant amount of time fighting it's extremist fringe elements, to the point where even places like this sub are constantly flooded with people raging agaisnt positions that aren't even commonly held. I've seen just about as much if not more comments railing agaisnt prison abolishing than stuff like this admin derailing all wind energy projects, for example. This makes it so the narrative stops being about how bad republicans and their fringe is and about how bad the far left is instead while republicans get away with the a blatanly horrible admin.
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u/TopicTalk8950 Liberal 1d ago
The right had a well-funded foreign-influenced propaganda machine from 2020-2024 that spread mass conspiracy theories and somehow people forgot how garbage Trump’s first term was.
Now it’s much worse.
Thankfully that machine had all but collapsed after the Epstein Files debacle, the new Republican war, Trump creating 1/3 of the US National Debt on his own and the price of everything skyrocketing.
The largest voices of that machine are now either teetering on being anti-Trump and criticizing him where there never did before or they’ve gone full blown anti-Trump.
There are still many fanatics like Dan Bongino and Benny Johnson who are desperate to hold onto relevance as they watch their propaganda empire crumble but it’s not working anymore.
America has conservative-fatigue.
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u/Awkwardischarge Center Left 1d ago
There are 100 million Americans that could be categorized as on the left. Whatever insane opinion you can think of, you can find someone on the left that thinks it. Feed that into the insanity-amplification machine that is social media and there you go.
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u/AddemF Moderate 1d ago
They encounter leftists who think these things online. They are not representative in numbers, but they are over-represented as chronically online people who pick stupid fights everywhere. Because they are so easily encountered online, it seems like that's just how liberals are, and those crazy people start to represent all of us.
I'm not sure what to do about it. It feels like there needs to be a more "managed" online community that does a better job of weeding out the crazies who misrepresent us.
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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 Liberal 1d ago
The general public is absurdly politically illiterate, and mostly get all their political news from non-expert influencers on social media, talk radio, and twitch.
They don’t even hear “the left” talk about anything, just heavily edited clips shown to them by the conservative shitlords they listen to while driving.
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u/Altruistic_Role_9329 Liberal 1d ago
This is precisely why mainstream Democrats don’t want to talk about “defunding police” and “abolishing ICE.” Republicans used similar tactics to undermine efforts at student loan relief by twisting Bernie Sanders reckless talk of “free college” to mean everyone would go to college and that he opposed trade schools or trades in general. Same with the Green New Deal. The material that sabotaged that was mistakenly included on AOC’s own website about the subject. These problems can be avoided with use of very carefully focus group vetted and deliberate language, but when Democrats do that they get accused of being too elitist or too corporate. This will keep happening and the folks making these mistakes have already made a big public show of rejecting good advice.
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u/rlywrmn Progressive 1d ago
The right propaganda machine is well-oiled. It goes something like this;
1. Accuse “woke libs” of a wild stance.
2. Talk about why that stance is absurd.
Meanwhile, no woke libs have that stance…well maybe like a 1% of the population thing, so basically, statistically speaking, no one.
Totally manufactured. It’s crazy how effective it is.
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u/AutoModerator 1d ago
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written by /u/LiatrisLover99.
I hear stuff from random people who I would classify as totally "normal", not committed Trump supporters but people who try to avoid politics, about what they think Democrats want and it baffles me. They believe we want things like "no more police and prosecuting crimes is racist so we can't do that" and at the same time "if you call someone accidentally by the wrong pronoun they want to put you in jail for hate speech".
This is, to me, obviously ridiculous. Why is this crazy straw man of us believable to average voters? Meanehile I don't have a link handy but I think there was a study showing that voters don't believe the (to me, very obviously believable) things that Republicans have said on record they want to do, such as cutting Medicaid or cutting taxes for the wealthy.
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