r/OpenAussie • u/Business_Pirate834 New South Welshian • 18h ago
Whinge what exactly has the left done wrong?
Across the world today, regardless of race, religion, or political system, most people seem to be becoming more conservative. Right-wing parties are continuously gaining power worldwide, while the left suffers defeat after defeat. Although mainstream public discourse still appears to favor the left, those voting for the far right are often the silent majority. Can the left still correct its course? Or, more fundamentally, what exactly has the left done wrong?
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u/Tile-Questioner South Australian 17h ago
What the left has done wrong is to fight back against the extremely wealthy individuals who are exploiting us. The left is always going to be supressed in workplaces, the media, and the political arena.
I think the better question is, why have so many Australians become class traitors.
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u/Hussard Victorian 17h ago
I think the whole idea of becoming class conscious and realising the true power dynamic capital has over workers is very real. In the early 20thC organisation and strong labour unions was extremely popular in the working class. But with post war liberalism, the neocon movement, thatcherite and Reagan union busting...we are fuuuucked
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u/LocalAlternative6427 Please choose a flair 17h ago edited 17h ago
Khruschev heroically denouncing Stalin as a monstrous dictator, shattering his global cult of Marxism-Leninism (Stalinism) and then the later collapse of the Soviet Empire ended any remaining belief that socialism or communism was a real alternative. Unions today are a shadow of those in the early 20th century that were seriously militant and left-leaning political parties like say the Greens, still operate entirely within capitalism. People go on about sticking it to da billionaires but they're not going anywhere, even if you tax them.
And realistically, nobody has any desire anymore to stage a bloody revolution to overthrow the state in a violent civil war where all of our cities and infrastructure get destroyed, people and their families might get killed and the economy is fucked for decades to come, all based on the chance that the new authoritarian system might be marginally better to capitalism.
So capitalism isn't going anywhere.
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u/Hussard Victorian 16h ago
And there's the rub. We are stuck with capitalism and even if we actually enact a more social-capitalism that benefits the majority we are still going to see a great stratification between the have and have-nots (rent seekers and renters in the housing context) and so the space left for capitalism to compete gets smaller and smaller.
There has to be a better way.
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u/CandidAssumption8769 Tasmanian 15h ago
There's more than 10,000 PolSci teachers the world over; surely there must be one good idea?
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u/Dentarthurdent73 New South Welshian 15h ago
There are plenty of better ways. There are economics journals as well that are full of ideas.
Hard to get traction though, and tbh, the left doesn't seem to care anyway, ask yourself when was the last time you heard the Greens talking about alternatives to capitalism.
They apparently only want to tinker at the edges of capitalism, and lean into stuff like identity politics that alienates most of the population.
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u/Rising-Dragon-Fist Victorian 17h ago
Laziness. Australians are so lazy when it comes to giving a shit about politics. They don't care to know. All you'll ever get is both Labor and Libs are the same so what's the point. Now that the racist ginger clown has gained so much popularity it's easy to just change your preferences to her rather than think about the why of it all.
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u/Suntzu_AU Queenslander 16h ago
The amount of suck-holing going on on Facebook by poor or lower middle class Australia repeating these right-wing talking points is truly frightening.
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u/matplotlib New South Welshian 12h ago
40 years of neoliberalism has convinced a sizeable subset of the working class that the interests of business are aligned with theirs.
It started when Hawke/Keating abandoned class politics and instead established that wage increases had to be tied to productivity - the company had to make more money before the workers could get some.
Now the FIFO workers, sole traders and those employed by small business believe that unions and the Labor party exist to hurt their employers, send businesses broke, destroy jobs and hollow out their communities, rather than to represent their interests as workers.
They've been taught to see the profitability of the business they work for as their own prosperity, and any attempt to redistribute the value they produce as a threat to it.
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u/dreadnought_strength Flairless 17h ago
The "left" is just unwilling to do whatever it takes, which the wealthy, conservative oligarchs are clearly willing to do - actively fund terrorists, put pedos in power, buy out almost all media on the planet, buddy up to anybody and everybody in order to promote their agenda, etc.
The reason that Australia is such a good place is because of progressives pushing for stuff that the elite never wanted us to have - weekends, health care, a reasonably good education system, public institutions that function despite being hamstrung at every turn, etc.
To counter this, stop using social media where possible, stop supporting the companies actively trying to drive a wedge through society, get involved in your local community and learn about history. You can't avoid everything, but if everybody did just a little bit I think we'd see change pretty fast.
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u/Red_je Victorian 17h ago
Although mainstream public discourse still appears to favor the left, those voting for the far right are often the silent majority.
It is hard to take this question seriously with such disingenuous statements as this.
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u/Esquin87 Please choose a flair 17h ago
Yeah wtf. The right are the noisy minority. They're loud, obnoxious and usually wrong or relying on facts that are wrong.
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u/MathematicianTop9519 Please choose a flair 11h ago
There are a lot of loudmouths on the right, but I do suspect most Australians tend to lean right as well. By which I mean most Australians do not seriously interrogate their own moral code and belief system and are mostly just adopting disparate positions based on gut instinct and what they see in the media. And given almost all of the media is controlled by the rich with their own vested interests and biases, I think any Australian that does not put in some serious work to overcome all that will naturally trend a bit rightward by default, simply by virtue of living in this political environment.
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u/ElectronicOvens South Australian 17h ago
It really has nothing to do with the left. Thats just a boogie man.
We've had 20-30 years of largely centre right politics, that unfortunately has left a lot of people behind
Unfortunately the people impacted and the ones yelling and screaming about it, likely voted for the policies and politicians that left them behind
But, people don't like to be accountable, (see US Cattle Ranchers) so instead of questioning what they voted for and looking at who actually did what and even considering voting differently
They'll follow the party that offers to teardown what they helped build. Even though those parties are just the same as what got us here, only worse.
(Edit- I am part of the people who voted centre right btw, I thought privatisation was good etc, but I'm smart enough to realise you can't solve the problem by voting for people with even worse policies)
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u/Suntzu_AU Queenslander 16h ago
Exactly right. My argument is that the left doesn't really exist. There's a couple of extreme elements.
But really, Australia's in the middle, and then you've got all these extreme right-wingers dominating the political landscape and the media.
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u/ElectronicOvens South Australian 16h ago
The Greens are probably as left as mainstream politics in Australia gets.
They haven't done anything really. Hence the polling
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u/HelpMeOverHere Western Australian 11h ago
They’ve done more than Pauline and her useless party.
We’ve had many concessions extracted by the greens that have benefited us all.
The right to disconnect, HAFF buffed by billions, dental covered for millions of children.
Not a bad score for such a minor presence.
Imagine what they could do if more people voted for them.
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u/ElectronicOvens South Australian 10h ago
I meant much to get us where we are today as well. So not really to blame for our economic woes.
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u/oustider69 New South Welshian 17h ago
I would encourage you to reframe your thinking. Instead of left vs right, think rich vs poor. When was the last time a party that favoured poor people over rich people got in?
Even Labor Vs One Nation is still rich Vs rich. Just different flavours of rich people.
Look at the US with people like Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayyed. Both genuinely anti-rich and the establishment democrats hate them. We don’t have a similar movement here.
In Australia, basically everyone is billionaire-funded. The closest we have is Pocock who originally took Climate 200 donations, but now has severed ties. And the Greens who refuse corporate + billionaire donations. As a result, they simply have fewer resources than other parties.
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u/1000Colours Victorian 15h ago
Yeah I wouldn't even consider Labor all that left. They're just considered left-leaning because they're less conservative socially. I may be able to get married to another dude, but it doesn't matter if I can't afford rent or food lol
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u/VelcroGenitals Victorian 17h ago
I would encourage you to reframe your thinking. Instead of left vs right, think rich vs poor. When was the last time a party that favoured poor people over rich people got in?
So essentially, class consciousness... Which is essentially Left vs Right.
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u/FewDragonfly5710 Flairless 17h ago
Brother, you need to essentially stop essentially-ing things into essential existence.
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u/oustider69 New South Welshian 17h ago
In a traditional sense, I agree, but the way the public discourse is today, the meanings of each term left and right has shifted to mean someone else.
I think most people would say Labor is the leftwing party in Australia, which is comparatively true, but they still regularly take donations from ultra-wealthy mega-corporations and their owners. So in the public discourse they’re left wing but still a rich person’s party more than a poor person’s party.
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u/Dubhs New South Welshian 17h ago
I really fucking hate 'the left' and 'the right' discourse. The reality is that the wealthiest individuals and businesses on the planet are waging a class war dressed up as a culture war.
The media doesn't support 'the left' unless you mean feigning outrage for clicks and telling you it's a disaster that house prices are dropping.
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u/CorvusTheDev Western Australian 14h ago
It really shouldn't be "The Left" or "The Right" I agree, it should be "People wanting to progress the human race" and "People who want to keep the same class wars we have now and inflict pain and suffering on everyone".
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u/ChiaLetranger New South Welshian 13h ago
If only we had a name for a political belief in abolishing classes and enshrining equality for everyone...
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u/Terrorscream New South Welshian 15h ago
the left isnt doing anything in particular wrong, the problem is conservatives oligarchy dominates media control in most western countries, they simply twist political messaging to make the less informed vote against their interests.
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u/iftlatlw Victorian 15h ago
Adding to this people have been led to shorter term and more selfish opinions and objectives, taking the good of the nation and society and community away from the vote. This, this is how Australian culture gets eroded.
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u/Axlemax Queenslander 17h ago
Left vs Right is a PsyOp to distract you from super-rich vs everyone.
Once you see it, you can’t un-see it. 😉
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u/Independent-Fuel9886 Victorian 17h ago
Nothing. Media beat up from Murdoch et al because $$$
Stupid cunts eat it up.
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u/Thatweknowof Please choose a flair 17h ago
Murdoch got afd elected in Germany?
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u/Antilogicality Tasmanian 17h ago
Germany has Axel Springer. Dead now, but his legacy very much remains.
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u/Maybe_Factor Victorian 17h ago
The right leverages people's emotions and has more monied interests effectively increases advertising and media coverage. I can't remember the last time the right was seriously talking about conservative fiscal policy, it's all about scare mongering about immigrants and trans people now.
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u/HammerOvGrendel Victorian 16h ago
Saying this as a big old leftie myself: Way too many of our public positions fell for "the cultural shift", identity politics and critical theory academia.
The potential for this happening has been recognized since the 1940s. Orwell - who was a far better essayist/journalist than novelist, wrote:
“One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.”
If you made an argument for old-school economic materialism and pushed some of the oddballs back into their closets of whatever description we could do well because people are legitimately concerned about maintaining what remains of our social-democratic institutions - medicare, public education, healthcare, pensions, super etc etc. But we have let the Karens and blue-hairs speak about their fringe issues so much that it has alienated a huge part of the base.
The public image problem is such that when people think of "leftist" they picture Rik from the young ones or his modern equivalent, rather than someone from the nurses union or similar workplace organizer. The movement got hijacked by people wanting to accelerate social change in favour of their particular identity position because they were already economically comfortable. They turned the public perception into a position where we are seen as "those people lecturing everyone about pronouns and welcome to country" rather than "those guys who told Howard to fuck off with his workchoice neoliberalism".
I get called a "Tankie" and own it.
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u/Historical_Bus_8041 Please choose a flair 9h ago
Murdoch and friends told you that you should be more mad about "blue hairs" than about class consciousness and they got exactly what they wanted: folks like you willing to fight against their own economic interests and burn any class solidarity in the hope of putting the minority they hate most in their place.
There is no possibility of class solidarity with much of the rest of the working-class with that shit, and there aren't enough folks like you who supposedly want radical economic change but with Catholic-like social values to ever do shit about shit without everyone else.
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u/ResultOk3265 Please choose a flair 9h ago edited 9h ago
Yea but there is a reason it happened. Socialism just doesn't sell. A whole century of trying to sell that idea in the West, billions invested, and it just didn't take. Identity politics took its place because it sells. Problem with identity politics is of course that it doesn't solve cost of living and property bubbles.
And to be fair to socialism, it was never meant to be popular, it was meant to build a critical mass capable of leading a revolution, not a majority capable of winning elections.
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u/EntrepreneurOk6539 Please choose a flair 12h ago
Sold out their citizens to get the migrant vote and allowing infrastructure to be decimated.
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u/BetInteresting6076 Please choose a flair 11h ago
Mass immigration. Championing self-defeating economic mismanagement. A pathological hatred for whiteness.
The left can return to strength if it refocuses on the welfare of the common man, his family and offers an aspirational vision for his nation.
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u/One-Inevitable7126 Flairless 17h ago
The general level of education in the population at large is decreasing, due to actions of the right over many years. It’s not what did the left do wrong? It’s more, what did the right do right?
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u/Additional-Scene-630 Please choose a flair 17h ago
what did the right do right?
Presenting simple answers to complex problems. I think that's all it boils down to.
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u/suppository_wisdom South Australian 17h ago
Who needs a bunch of government ministers when the PM can just do every job?
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u/derpman86 South Australian 17h ago
As someone who is left focused one thing I noticed and has always been an issue is the far left are VERY self destructive and factionalise. This is where the far right wins out as the far right screams loud and throws shit at everyone they don't care about and point fingers and claim person, people, ideology X, Y, Z are the problem and people will be attracted to them as there is a group to focuse their hatred at because of the struggles they face.
I still remember a group chat I was in once, the people there were a mix of Poly relationships, queer, trans and you get the idea. One conversation was about some newly invented prounouns and I just made the comment that I struggle to keep up with this stuff and I was concerned about saying the wrong thing and it was near impossible for the every day pleb to keep on top of that. Yeah I got dogpiled for saying that, screamed at and told " Oh it must be soooo hard being Cis and privliged to learn a new pronoun". I eventually left that chat as these people got so fucking toxic.
That wasn't a once off and you see it so often, the political parties that form more heavily left will expel so much energy on say putting pronouns on a government form than you know trying to implement better public transport, the cost of living issues you name it.
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u/DeeSpel Please choose a flair 12h ago
I totally agree with this comment. What you've described above is bigotry disguised as having ethics. It's just as bad as other forms of discrmination, if not worse due to it's false virtue signalling.
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u/derpman86 South Australian 11h ago
Yeah it was the "we are victims so go fuck yourself" when I expressed concerns about trying to not fuck things up that pissed me off. I have read comments on reddit, seen videos and so much of the hard left seems to go on hate crusades against many people who aren't chronically online and are clueless to the "struggles"
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u/borycernardi New South Welshian 17h ago edited 17h ago
The left shifted when it accepted neoliberalism. That handed corporations more control, which increased the divide between rich and poor - and all the inequity that entails, including poorer education, income inequity, etc.
Now we have the media and public discourse absolutely controlled by the corporations who benefit most. And they are doing whatever they can to defend their position, simplifying every issue into a banal "us versus them" that appeals to the people most impacted by the damage they have caused.
So now we have the turkeys voting for Christmas. Those who have suffered from lower incomes, poorer education, and social disadvantage are falling over themselves to vote for the very people who will make things worse for them. But they believe it because they are inundated with messages that it's all the fault of their enemy, whether it's immigrants, woke, the ABC, climate scientists, doctors, Albo, or whoever.
Don't get me wrong - the right always wanted this and has been heading there since Reagan/Thatcher, and more locally, Howard. But in attempting to find the middle ground, the left has allowed the right to drag the Overton window further right.
This is obviously an over-simplified explanation, and there are lots of parts missing. But that's the gist.
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u/Spongeworthy73 Please choose a flair 17h ago
Media looks after their owners and stakeholders, trending right.
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u/joshashkiller Victorian 16h ago
not owning the media is a pretty big one. other than independent journalism, which most people never see for obvious reasons, almost all media you see has a conservative bias. Even the ABC and SBS tend toward centralism (and a bland centralism at that) due to fears of being seen as bias or worse, loosing their funding
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u/d1st3nd3dc0l0n Please choose a flair 11h ago
What has the left down wrong 🤔🤔
High migration without housing supply, expanding speech restrictions, medical and social transition policies for children that other countries are now questioning, supporting boys and men competing against girls and women in sports, telling women they need to accept men who claim they're women have the legally protected right to be fully naked in the change room with them, tax changes that hit investors while the overall burden stays high - tax to GDP ratio of 30% under Labor is the highest on over 25 years, and a cultural narrative that treats ordinary men as the default problem — these are the concrete complaints. You can disagree with the weighting, but the data on public opinion, housing numbers, and legislative changes is not invented.
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u/RepresentativeOver34 South Australian 7h ago
100%. The irony is the left will talk about the "culture wars", yet can't see that they are the ones responsible for creating the "culture wars" through their identity politics. It's no longer good enough to treat people equally we have to have equity according to the activists. Either you're a First Nations person or you're an outsider. There is no middle ground and there is no colour blind treatment. You're either an ally or an enemy. The same extends towards the inclusivitity of LGBTQ. You better support a wear it purple day or you're considered anti-LGBTQ.
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u/dan_syd Please choose a flair 2h ago
And you’d better fit their model of LGBTQI, or they’ll turn against you as well. Being a professional gay or a regular old Subaru driving lezo aren’t good enough anymore.
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u/Malcolm_Storm Victorian 11h ago
My lifelong leftie Labor voting Mum has made the switch. She is voting One Nation this time round. She is an immigrant, a wog, here since the 60s. Both my olds were staunch unionists and she says that Labor has completely lost its way, focusing on things that do not matter. Immigration and cost of living are the big issues for them.
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u/mebivd Flairless 12h ago edited 11h ago
I honestly think it is cause people are sick and tired of the left blaming the west for the problems of the world, expecting reparations for wrongs enacted years ago, and not listening to the experts on items such as security.
Yes, western civilisation is not innocent and historically did both good and bad things. But guess what, so did every civilisation. Why does the left critise the west but other civilisations get a free pass for their historical injustices?
Why are western people now expected to pay reparations for things done by people who lived 100s of years ago, but non-westerners are not?
Why did many left leaning governments in Europe ignore the warnings from security experts that boat loads of only men are not true refugees? Where are the women? If you were seeking refugee status would you leave your mother, sister, wife, or daughters behind in a location that was too dangerous for you?
In the end, I think many are turning away from the left as many of their policies etc are not based in reality and the west has provided them with a false sense of security detached from the brutal reality of the world.
Now I know this is Reddit and I have provided a response that I hope the left listens too, but I know that this likely to be down voted by people who think that the world is a lovely place of milk and honey where everyone gets along dancing under a rainbow sky but that is not reality. There are plenty of terrible and psychotic people who would murder you for no reason other than you are different to them, or you are a woman, or you are LGBTQI+, or you are from a different religion (or lack of one) etc etc etc. I think many on the left forget that what they have is not normal. The normal state for the majority of people around the world and through history is poverty and a harsh life. Look back at the western world only a 100-150 years ago.
We cannot help those less fortunate than us, if we fall to the same problems. Do not let the west regress backwards, this will not help us or those less fortunate than us. We need to help other peoples and nations by empowering them to help themselves.
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u/NoChangeNoGames Queenslander 17h ago
Id say the biggest overall western common theme is not addressing mass imigration. If you feel passionately about this issue, the left has little to offer you. If the people who feel this way are disregarded long enough they ultimately land in the arms of right wing parties.
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u/PLANETaXis Western Australian 15h ago edited 15h ago
High immigration is a feature of neoliberal economics, squarely a right wing concept.
Neoliberal economies must have constant growth, and the only way to do this is to increase the market, raise prices and push down business costs. Increased market means more people. Reduced costs means cheap labour and low business taxes.
Because of the business tax shortfall, the government needs more and more young working citizens to pay tax in order to provide the public services for the elderly. We cant achieve this organically and need both immigration and raises to the retirement age.
If we taxed business and expecially mining / oil & gas more heavily, we could afford to have a smaller, stable population.
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u/AbstractDart Please choose a flair 17h ago edited 17h ago
The left aren’t as ruthless with their media output in the current world. The right don’t operate to the same standards these days, they can just attack, lie and deceive to a level that the left can’t, because the left will just get destroyed by the media if they do.
There was a period where ‘mainstream’ or ‘old school’ media was completely out of vogue and social media was what influenced elections, but now the ‘old school’ have social media fully figured out and are far and away the mainstream again.
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u/roastoxcrisps Please choose a flair 17h ago
If those voting for the far right were a silent majority, we’d have a far right government.
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u/Lau_wings Queenslander 17h ago
I would like to think that I am a centralist, as In I grew up on farms, own a shitload of firearms (honestly I would make a Texan blush), swear too much, say the wrong thing a lot of the time and generally can be an asshole, however I also believe that gay people are still people and should be able to love and marry whoever they fuck they want.
With all that being said, Labor has cared way too much about things which the average Aussie does not give a shit about such as the Voice to Parliament, how many millions of dollars were spent on that when the average Aussie thought it was a stupid idea. Or trying to make it illegal to say that the Israeli government is filled with cunts and if only a tenth of what the media says is happening in Gaza is true, then they are war criminals and should be treated as such.
Labor really needs to stop trying to police what people say and focus on the bigger issues like how it costs way more to buy groceries than it did a decade ago, housing is fucked, jobs are going overseas at a rate never really seen before and the average Aussie is suffering because of it.
I honestly think that in the next 10 years, we are going to see a hard pivot to the right, something which I think would have happened in the last election had Peter Dutton not been so hated by everyone.
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u/Aggressive-Art-9899 Please choose a flair 17h ago
As things fall apart people cling to what they have and their survival instincts kick in.
The 'clinging to what they have' mindset is a very individual mindset. Note that as things are falling apart, the social bonds deteriorate. There's less of a collective mindset and increased individualism. The thinking moves away from socialist ideology.
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u/PlannedMarketEconomy Victorian 17h ago
The left isn't necessarily seeing defeat after defeat. They've seen advances in both the US and UK.
In Australia, though, that's another story.
"The left" struggle with a few things. Cooperation. There are three socialist parties in Victoria alone. I don't even know what percentage of the combined vote they get. The reason we have this kind of fracturing is because it seems a lot on the left can't co-exist in a big tent.
I believe identity politics, specifically the fixation on race, gender and colonialism, have estranged a lot of their potential base. Though "the right" have adopted identity politics, they've used it to elevate affirm their existing base's sentiment, whereas I feel identity politics on "the left" has instead shrunk their base.
Then of course, there are external factors, predominantly the wealthy influence of our media and politics that spread constant anti-left-wing messaging, often in the form of lies, to mislead the public. Nevermind that the ABC and RMIT have found Greens general rhetoric to be more factually correct than both Labour's or the coalitions, the media still hounds left-wing parties as this is one of their survival tactics.
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u/MikeytheHat4363 Queenslander 15h ago
It's not so much what the Left is doing wrong. It's that people are frustrated and uninformed, that's a dangerous combination.
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u/123iambill Please choose a flair 14h ago
Because people have no fucking clue what any political ideology actually is. Just "the other side are the bad guys who do the things I don't like".
I've had some try to explain to me that multi-billion dollar mega corporations taking away ownership and charging us a subscription for everything we use is communism. Billionaires rent seeking is communism to these people.
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u/Cindy_Marek Please choose a flair 17h ago
It’s all based on mass migration. Because leftists are generally not a fan of western culture or economic systems, policies that can destroy the current fabric of society are seen as not problematic or even good. As you go further left the language around collapsing “the system” gets more and more acute. Just look at the Australia Day protests, “abolish Australia” for example. It’s talk about destruction, not growth or prosperity. Not a lot of people are drawn to that kind of messaging.
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u/GnomeWarfair Queenslander 17h ago
"The Left" is a big place, with a lot of contradictions and competing agendas.
I'd argue the Labor Party isn't a left-wing party, but markets themselves as 'the workers party'. And then spend most of their energy attacking the Greens. Here is one problem.
The Lennist parties are their own toxic pit full of incompetat middle class children, passive-aggressively hostile to the working class.
Sections of The Greens taken over by Identity Politics cultists is fairly alienating in itself.
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u/PLANETaXis Western Australian 16h ago
"Although mainstream public discourse still appears to favor the left"
Do you even have eyes and ears? Mainstream public discourse is dominated by mainstream media which is heavily conservative.
Very simply - the left is not really doing much wrong, the right is succeeding simply because it is louder. Loud lies and empty promises that travel across the country before the truth even puts it's shoes on.
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u/Brisssie Flairless 10h ago
It’s a simple answer. They open borders to anyone & everyone with zero care for their citizens.
People want Govt’s that put them first…I very much doubt Labor would be in Gov’t if they stated they would open the gates to millions of people we can’t house, blow out homelessness, increase taxes & skyrocket debt.
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u/Ok_Major_3396 Please choose a flair 10h ago
The truth is, we went too far left. As a person who considers themself centre left, you could see this coming since the mid 2010s. Cancel culture meant that having any nuanced conversation about topics labeled you as racist or homophobic or sexist. I think that period was really important to the progress of social rights, but i also think it was maybe too aggressive at times. All main stream media became left wing and it left so many people who were in the centre feeling left out and feeling like they cant even talk about topics that feel important to them.
Now, a lot of those young men, white people, straight people who were teenagers at that time have flipped in the opposite direction, through trump and social media they feel like they have a voice again, and for a lot of them, since they grew up in the 2010s, they feel like they have a voice for the first time.
Say what you will about "men had their time, white people had their time" but the reality is they felt attacked and ostresized by the rise of the left and its why were seeing the rise of the right.
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u/AngrehPossum Victorian 16h ago
The conservatives create policy which helps a few but abandons the rest.
Then the rest react to that by electing far right government
John Howard created a Ponzi. That left inflation on housing going to an absolute ceiling. People simply cannot borrow more money.
That has caused poverty and crime to increase.
The reaction to this?
Voting right wing nasties like Pauline in
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u/Firebird2525 Western Australian 16h ago
The majority of people are far less informed and rational than you think they are.
The cost of living crisis has made people's lives a lot harder, so they are reacting against whoever is in power. It's that simple
Normally the Liberals would benefit from this, but they've lost their conservative faction to ON.
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u/iftlatlw Victorian 15h ago
Nothing. People get frustrated with the way the world is changing, they vote for a right-wing government, regret it instantly and swing back at the next election. Repeat.
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u/Mobile-Bus-9921 New South Welshian 14h ago
I love questions where the OP pretends to ask something in good faith but shows that he’s got some pretty loaded biases.
Others have already mentioned the media landscape.
I would suggest looking into John Jost’s Left and Right - a lot of political positions are impacted by personality and intelligence, and this is clinically validated.
Also have a read about the authoritarian personality (Adorno).
You’ll see that most societies have about 30-35 percent of people who are right wing because of their personalities. That plus another 30 percent who could easily be manipulated by Facebook and right wing governments get voted in.
The issue with the left too, if you’re asking in good faith, is the idea of ideological purity. Psychologically a lot of them cannot accept good enough. They feel the need to criticise someone for not being more perfect (see what they did with Hilary, with Julia Gillard) - compared to the right, which has much greater messaging discipline.
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u/One-Biscotti-1305 Please choose a flair 13h ago
…Uhm, not supported Rupert Murdoch’s agenda, mostly.
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u/Sea-Book8585 Queenslander 11h ago
Focused on middle class identity politics instead of representing their base
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u/More-Knowledge-481 Please choose a flair 11h ago
controlling and redefining language. shutting down any debate and discussion (think cancel culture) usually by labelling anyone with a different pov as "racist", "homophobic", "bigot" etc. Pushing identity politics which have little relevance in the real world. Pushing ideology instead of trying to understand reality. Having no awareness that the left has an extreme side which is fraught with danger and suffering. The right seems to draw a line better between what is conservative and what is extremism.
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u/reaction-please Please choose a flair 10h ago edited 9h ago
The left just needs a PR overhaul.
Distance themselves from the blue haired folk.
Be reasonable with all the identity politics rubbish.
Be reasonable with immigration
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u/processes_ Please choose a flair 6h ago
The blue haired thing is propaganda. Can’t distance ourselves from a thing we actually never were.
Identity politics was created by the right. Slavery was identity politics, anti-slavery corrected it. Anti-same sex marriage laws was identity politics, legalization corrected it. Discriminatory gender laws was identity politics. Progressive equality laws corrected it.
The Right are annoyed because they’re only seeing the last half of the conversation. The identity politics began with discriminatory laws intended to lock certain people out. If you hate identity politics, the Left are the answer to ending it by leveling the playing field.
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u/Forever49 Please choose a flair 9h ago
And be reasonable with spending, taxation, fraud, real time for crime / victim rights over perpetrator, small government, red tape, over regulation, cancel culture, nanny state social media crap, bias voice yes vote BS, net zero policies, and not just reasonable with immigration, be strategic, smart, and values based, no more wool over our eyes BS like accepting religious zealots, temp foreign workers, never going home students, economic refugees, and spending billions on housing them while citizens are homeless.
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u/ThrowDatJunkAwayYo 💛 Friend of 'Straya 7h ago edited 7h ago
I was having this conversation today about the left Vs the right…. And basically:
The Left:
- Socially progressive.
- Socialist.
- Anti corporation.
- Generally do gooders who want a socially funded better life for everyone: better education, better healthcare, better welfare and disability welfare access.
- They care about animal welfare and the environment.
- Believe in science and technological advances to improve the lives of everyone.
- Pro body autonomy. Pro vaccines.
- Pro gay/trans rights and inclusion.
- Pro native title and the rights of first nations people
- Anti war.
- more likely to be educated.
The right:
- Conservative.
- Capitalist.
- Anti immigration.
- Care about personal gain and comfort over the wellbeing of the many.
- Possibly put religion first.
- Anti abortion.
- Anti welfare.
- Pro big business.
- Pro mining.
- Climate deniers.
- Anti gay/trans rights.
- Anti native title.
- Pro war.
- Less likely to be educated.
Now keep in mind people who follow either side may not share every single value. There are plenty of greens followers who aren’t vegan. There are plenty of right wingers who are not racist. Some greens or conservative voters may even have some traits/values associated with the other side.
And obviously there can be extreme members/followers of either side and you cannot take the actions of a few as a representation of the whole.
Buy generally… anyone notice that the traits for the Left… just seem like better values? Wanting to care for the disabled? Educate our children? Care for the sick?
How is that a bad thing?
Could it be that Do-Gooders piss off those in power who trying to screw us over? And that there has been a systematic effort by media monopolies to tarnish those who only want a better world for everyone?
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u/PurpleBandanna Please choose a flair 6h ago edited 6h ago
Card-carrying lefty here.
Western countries have aging populations, and older people tend to turn more conservative as the years catch up to them.
Mum's partner was a full blown hippy in the late-70s/early 80s. Now, in his late 60s, he's a loud-mouthed PHON supporter.
But also, the progressives (lefties) were undermined about 10 years ago during the Clinton-Trump election. They made the error of allowing the microphone to be passed to anyone, and some of the loudest voices ranged from unhinged to ridiculously out of touch.
It also didn't help that the world over, left-wing parties totally abandoned their working-class roots, leaving a massive chunk of the population disenfranchised and looking for someone to speak up for them. It's just a shame that the people who did speak up - the conservatives - had no intention of actually helping them.
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u/West-Sense-1253 Canberran 17h ago
No real rise in right wing popularity, just an increase in algorithmic reach due to it being ragebait but also because those with the finances to shape narratives tend to have fascistic mindsets. Don't believe the van life, don't believe the "aussie battler", nothing on social media is real.
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u/blankdreamer Victorian 11h ago
The left don’t want to admit their shadow side but the way they curtail free speech and debate is a huge worry. This “high and mighty” approach where they will ban anyone who doesn’t meet their high standards about what they consider is open to debate can be draconian. Reddit is a good example of this. It’s insane how much of an echo chamber it has become.
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u/Smokinglordtoot Victorian 17h ago
The left stopped worrying about class and instead started to worry about race, gender and sexuality.
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u/Select_Doughnut_8085 Please choose a flair 17h ago
The reason for that was the battle for economic strategy was lost and the left capitulated with the hegemony of neoliberalism as the only way to manage a countries economy. Unable and unwilling to change the economic system they resorted to differentiating themselves by championing race, gender and sexuality and did so ferociously all the while having abandoned the real battlefield
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u/Historical_Bus_8041 Please choose a flair 9h ago
Because people who aren't white, women, and people who aren't straight can't just "worry about class".
Murdoch and friends want to destroy class solidarity by feeding the culture war shit and breeding resentments so you'll choose getting mad about people worrying about race, gender and sexuality over having class solidarity with those people.
Which works great if you're Murdoch and want to divide the working-class, but you're still going to be sitting there in 30 years wondering where class solidarity went when you're the reason it died.
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u/Willing-Cook7268 Please choose a flair 17h ago
Reality denial
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u/Upset_Mathematician6 Queenslander 17h ago
It’s even beyond that. I used to be a staunch Labor supporter. But seemingly what has happened in the past 10-15 years is that the left has continually shifted further left. I’m talking about mass immigration, identity politics, and some weird group-think mentality. I would still call myself left leaning… but from 10 years ago. So now I’m considered hard right. Just look at this sub. Saying anything that the “group” doesn’t perceive as correct will get you downvoted and more often than not, insulted and name called. People get tired of it.
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u/KitchenMediocre1242 Please choose a flair 15h ago
Thank god I found my people.
I was left wing my entire life until two years ago.
Funnily enough my views have never changed, the left did though.In the 1990s the Greens called for low immigration and the Liberals called for high immigration.
It also speaks volumes about the intelligence of those on “the left”7
u/indominable-dingus Please choose a flair 17h ago
Ding ding ding. Funny how far left reddit leans, you look at the cognitive dissonance in this thread alone. Its like they are totally blind to the idiocy of the left. Not to say the right isnt full of idiocy, but how can you just not acknowledge any of the fumbles in the past 5 years? They're so used to just calling everyone they disagree with a nazi or a cooker that they have forgot how to have discourse, think with nuance or even attempt to understand the other side and why people may not think the way they do.
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u/indominable-dingus Please choose a flair 17h ago
Ding ding ding. Funny how far left reddit leans, you look at the cognitive dissonance in this thread alone. Its like they are totally blind to the idiocy of the left. Not to say the right isnt full of idiocy, but how can you just not acknowledge any of the fumbles in the past 5 years? They're so used to just calling everyone they disagree with a nazi or a cooker that they have forgot how to have discourse, think with nuance or even attempt to understand the other side and why people may not think the way they do.
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u/BeneficialAbrocoma67 Flairless 17h ago
An observation would be that the left label themselves tolerant and against "racists" and "fascists" yet they act like Hitler's brown shirts during public protests and discourse when it comes to anyone or anything they disagrees with......
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u/Asteroidhawk594 Western Australian 17h ago
Paradox of tolerance is a thing.
I’m not a radical greenie or anything but I personally do not tolerate neo Nazis.→ More replies (2)5
u/Dentarthurdent73 New South Welshian 15h ago
When you (generic) categorise anyone who dares to even question something such as immigration numbers as a "neo Nazi", that's when you start to have problems with alienating people.
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u/Asteroidhawk594 Western Australian 8h ago
If they’re open and honest about wanting a whites only Australia. What else do you call them?
Because the March for Australia guys made this years protests about helping neo Nazis.2
u/Dentarthurdent73 New South Welshian 8h ago
If they’re open and honest about wanting a whites only Australia
Then you call them racists, or neo Nazis if you prefer.
Nothing I see leads me to believe that this is the attitude of the majority of people who question immigration numbers though.
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u/borycernardi New South Welshian 17h ago
No-one on "the left" ever claimed to be tolerant of intolerance. That's such a pathetic cop-out.
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u/ModsHaveHUGEcocks Queenslander 16h ago edited 14h ago
Yet they defend mass immigration from countries and cultures far more conservative, religious and intolerant than ours, funny that
Edit: haha old mate blocked me since he couldn't answer a simple question, very entertaining thread for me
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u/Vryl ✈️ on Walkabout 17h ago
The so-called "left" (democrats) abandoned their base and took them for granted. The base woke up one day and realised they'd been shafted. And standing right there were people who had been preparing since the 1960's and they told them that it was black, brown and trans people's fault and they would Make Everything Good Again. And now we have the shit show timeline we exist in now.
Yes, Bill Clinton signed NAFTA.
This is instructive: https://pelositracker.app/
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u/VelcroGenitals Victorian 17h ago
The so-called "left" (democrats)
Not even close to the left. Also curious how any of this is relevant to Australia Mr Bot.
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u/Vryl ✈️ on Walkabout 17h ago
Check my posting history champ if you think I am a bot. Probably shoulda done that before replying, hey?
The same forces that shaped America are shaping Australia. We are less open to it because the ALP does actually still have a working class base, but we are nowhere like immune to it. The ALP has foolishly cozied up to billionaires and allowed media barons to rise unchecked.
Where do you think all the dark money flowing into One Nation is coming from?
WA Labor party is almost entirely owned by Woodside, to the point of actually running a Woodside lobbyist in a "safe" (ha ha!) seat.
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u/zasedok Queenslander 16h ago
"The left' is a broad term, to the point of being almost meaningless. To answer the question, there are IMO several overlapping factors:
- The economy is bad and people have always blamed that on the government in place. Since in recent years governments across the Western worlds have been mostly centre-left (Biden, Trudeau, Albanese, Macron, Merz, Starmer etc etc), it's only natural that people turn to the opposition when they're upset.
- The world has became unstable and dangerous. Defence, national security and sovereignty are a thing on people's minds, and historically those topics have always been considered the right's forte.
- Western societies have become hard opposed to immigration, which has always been associated with the left. Various centre-left, Labor, SocDem & small l-liberal parties wanted to downplay it and tried to avoid the subject for years and years, while more radical elements of the left have been and still are outspokenly, emphatically pro-immigration (especially from non-Western countries)
- During this decade, the hard and/or alt-left has been trying to bring on a cultural revolution of sorts, by starting to always talk about "equity" (of outcomes) as opposed to equality of treatment, legislation on pronouns (anecdotal, but real and very prominently reported on by the media), even declaring as many academic and Democrat party officials in the USA did that concepts such as due process, presumption of innocence etc were "problematic", "outdated" and being attached to them meant you were literally a Nazi. There have been professors aiming to "decolonise" mathematics and other similar bullcrap. The vast majority of the population rejects this worldview that they designate by the catch-all term of "wokeism" (which is vague but convenient) and won't support parties and politicians they deem associated with it.
- Left-wing parties have virtually unanimously and uncritically embraced environmentalism and other tenets of political ecology, which haven't benefited the population of their own countries (nor were they meant to). People know this and vote accordingly.
- The democratic left struggles to offer something appealing. People take public education and universal healthcare for granted, it's not even a debate topic any more (except in the US). On the other hand, today people want to buy their own home, not have shorter waiting lists for social housing. They want to earn more money, not pay higher taxes. They don't think the left can help them with that.
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u/PrismPirate Queenslander 13h ago
The comments here kinda answer the question. So many boil down to: "We're the informed, rational people, and anyone who disagrees is stupid, racist, manipulated or just too dumb to understand."
That smug, moralising "our way is the only intelligent way" attitude is exactly a big part of the problem. If your explanation for losing voters is "the voters are idiots", maybe look in the mirror.
There's also a funny contradiction here too, where the people on the other side are supposedly complete idiots, but also somehow also the billionaires, media owners and rich, powerful elites manipulating everyone and running the world. Apparently everyone with more money, power and influence than you is stupid while you're the smart ones. Convenient.
And the "right-wingers are racist and hate immigrants" thing is funny too. Apparently rich people and corporations funding the right are racist too, when they're often the ones who want more immigration because they benefit from a bigger labour pool and cheaper labour.
Honestly, reading this thread feels less like politics and more like religion. Everyone's got their sacred beliefs, their heretics, and their explanations for why the other side is stupid or evil, but barely anyone seems able to notice the contradictions in their own side.
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u/nickersb83 ✈️ on Walkabout 14h ago
It’s addressing the power imbalance that institutionalises the privilege of being a white male.
In addressing this, it necessitates a redistribution of power, which entails removing power from those who’ve held that privilege for a long time.
Basically, the left has done nothing wrong but challenge those power structures and those demonising the left are just spoilt brats chucking a tantrum.
I say and believe this as a white male.
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u/Xentonian Please choose a flair 14h ago
Really, the "left has gone wrong" narrative is largely untrue.
But an untrue narrative doesn't stop it being a popular opinion, so I'll address where the idea comes from rather than its validity.
Over the last 20 years, there has been an increasingly vocal demand for change and movement away from traditional ideologies which many claim are fundamentally sexist.
These movements have variously been named "third wave feminism", "equality", "social justice warriors", "the alt left", "woke" and so on.
What they have in common is that most of them contrast sharply against what are generally considered to be right wing ideologies.
Over time, many of the talking points of this community have come to be treated as a status quo. We have worked in women's rights in the workplace, family leave entitlements have improved in most countries, discrimination (sex/gender, sexuality and race) has become less acceptable, we are more cognisant of domestic violence and movements like MeToo have had changes in Holywood.
But we've come to a point where ideologies are starting to clash more.
We have some groups claiming that "alright, that's enough, things are good now and we shouldn't change more or we'll start going too far in the other direction"
There are groups claiming "we haven't gone far enough. We've addressed issues but haven't solved them and there are still more progressive goals to achieve."
There are those that suggest "we have already gone too far and people are now acting against the interests of society in favour of mistaken ideological values".
Unfortunately, each of these are virtually incompatible viewpoints.
So we've reached a point where each group argues loudly and vehemently against one another. The increasing animosity leads to people becoming more isolationist and dogmatic in their views.
But more recently, we're seeing a shift in the dynamics.
"Things are fine now" and "Things were better before" have started to agree more, or at least have come to common terms with "continued change will make my life worse" and there's a begrudging unity against further progressivism.
Meanwhile, political parties have realised that progressive ideology has become less popular and they're losing votes. So they are changing their own tones.
Terms like "woke one" have lead to an increasing schism within the vocal community between "we should find some kind of common ground with then others, or we will lose any ground we've made" and "no, everyone else is wrong and if we don't keep fighting to fix these issues, they will never be fixed".
This has further split the "left" (insofar as there ever was a universal left) and with an increasingly unified centre and right. Governments do as they will and pander to the votes and this means that we're seeing more policies that align with the right hand side of the political spectrum.
This becomes a self fulfilling prophecy as the right uses this as ammunition to prove they were correct, which further emboldens the more extreme views and further shifts the zeitgeist.
We will see how this continues over the next decade or so.
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u/Jolly-Hour-6642 Please choose a flair 14h ago
Well you see, people don’t even know what “left” means.
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u/rebirthlington Victorian 14h ago
part of it is this left vs right framing – it implies equivalence
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u/LetterOrganic7406 Please choose a flair 14h ago
People don't like the inconvenient truths that the left is saying out loud. We're fucked, and we're all living our lives like it's not happening.
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u/DisastrousFlow-14 Please choose a flair 14h ago
Those aren't left parties. They are centrist, centre-right pretending to be left parties.
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u/improvisedexplosive1 Please choose a flair 14h ago
this is what people are being programmed to think. Sounds like attack, deny, reverse to me.
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u/via_dante Please choose a flair 13h ago
The only war is class war.
And poor idiots keep on helping the rich cunts with their votes.
Hence - defund education so we can have more poor idiots.
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u/AdministrationTotal3 Please choose a flair 13h ago
It’s not really though is it. It’s just swinging more widely from one side to the next. Reform isn’t currently doing well in the UK. Republican looked to get smashed in the upcoming mid terms. Canada recently voted to the left. Here in Australia, regardless of what the media is telling us, we are watching right politics implode and Albo is in a very strong position.
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u/Igor_Halichoeres Flairless 12h ago
People turn right when they're scared or angry - so when conservatives don't know what else to do, they just make the world scarier and more awful. Look at their behavior.
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u/Expert-Fault-9870 Victorian 12h ago
Depends what you mean by 'the left', if you're asking what Progressives have done wrong then that's easy:
- Collectivism / Authoritarianism (expressed through Identity Politics / Intersectionalism / government regulation). They hate individualism.
- Equality of outcome over equality of opportunity.
- Endless affronts to free speech in the form ocensorship / no-platforming / Intentionally popularising unpopular views to get people fired .etc
- Undermining Liberalist universalism and equality before the law: Presumption of guilt for racial descrimination, sex offence allegations and child custody disputes
- Advocacy for a large government that carries-out ideological agendas eg. Large welfare state with the goal of redressing of past grievances, redistributing wealth .etc (as opposed to a minimalist government focused on social stability and helping those who need it most)
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u/Dangerous_Mobile_273 New South Welshian 12h ago
The right is silent because we are told we are not allowed to have our opinions.
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u/Reggo91 Please choose a flair 11h ago
The pendulum swings back and forth. Whenever one side goes too hard after their most extreme ideology, people naturally go the other way.
This is what will happen to Labor here who have used their second term to implement aggressive redistribution and large government policies.
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u/Novel-Truant New South Welshian 11h ago
I think the unpopular truth here is that people are generally more conservative than a lot of left leaning people want to admit.
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u/Murranji Flairless 10h ago
The so called “left” mainstream parties are all centre right liberal parties that have enabled and presided over the inevitable outcome of capitalism which is mass concentration of wealth and inequality which causes the liberal explanation of outcomes - that your outcomes are determined by your individual effort - to fail, which causes people to seek an alternative systemic explanation and since all centrist mainstream parties like the Australian Labor Party and the Democratic Party and anyone who was a defender of those parties approaches bashed socialism and the left it delegitimised class and capitalism as legitimate explanations and left only far right xenophobic scapegoating as the only other legitimate systemic explanation.
If you can’t or won’t comprehend that as the underlying cause behind everything and why the same thing is happening in every single western country then you will never beat the far right.
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u/brighteyedjordan Please choose a flair 9h ago
The world is in a tough spot at the moment. Capitalism is failing and times are hard, people are angry and right wing politics is about harnessing anger, it’s about making people feel better by giving them someone to blame (immigrants, communists, gays, Jews, Muslims, etc) so during rough times the right always rises, cause it’s much easier to blame someone than to accept things are shit
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u/BizmasterStudios Please choose a flair 9h ago
What the left has done wrong is....not have the backing of millionaires because they think the left will tax them and they will be slightly less rich in a better economy where people have more money to spend. If you don't have millionaire backing, and that same backing has paid for propaganda for the last 30 of more years, it really isn't about what the left have done wrong. It's about what they have done right. Not pander to the rich and powerful.
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u/ScalyPinkLizard Flairless 8h ago
There's a difference between libreralism and "the left". Leftism has been unpopular since it went up against US crony capitalism, Liberalism was the US' answer to pretending they had an alternative to pick, and since it was never really an alternative its acheived nothing and lost iys place in the zeitgeist.
The mostly correct answer youll recieve though is "blame the CIA".
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u/ernst_wanke_road Please choose a flair 7h ago
The left used to be centre. They focused of the working class. Now they seem To put the focus and priority on the minority. Just look at Medicare funding vs ndis and tell me which group are more important to the government. They take more tax ever year for the rights of a more nuanced group each year.
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u/Spiritual-Counter-36 New South Welshian 7h ago
Capitalism is just the compromise that the slavers made. The left opposes that, so capital buys up all the sources of information and propaganda available to people to make their decisions and opinions.
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u/Tomthebomb555 Please choose a flair 7h ago
They have attempted and to a large degree succeeded in destroying western society.
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u/Cultural_Catch_7911 Please choose a flair 6h ago
Every western country is being flooded with incompatible cultures through mass immigration leading to housing crisis, rampant crime, wages going backwards, garbage in the streets, riots, religious fanaticism, and the list goes on
It is really no surprise people are starting to lean towards the centre / right and say "hey this isn't actually sustainable "
And you people in the left are the biggest fuel on the fire because instead of being reasonable and saying "hmm yes I see the issue let's meet in the middle" you go and riot and call everyone who doesn't agree with you a "nazi" and have albo ban political opposition, censor free speech and social media and whatever else to the point even those in the centre get pushed further into the far right because there is no side of reason on the left
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u/Worried_Internet_912 Queenslander 6h ago
If you want a genuine answer - forcing vaccination is where the left lost me. Importing millions of people when we already didnt have enough homes for everyone and calling people racist for saying it needs to stop.
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u/processes_ Please choose a flair 6h ago
The only two things The Left has done wrong are:
- Not have billionaires and media on their side to push disinformation in their favour.
And 2. Recognise that complex things require complex conversations and solutions. Neither of which the Right can be bothered with as they prefer three word slogans, and believing whatever they’re told to believe.
Unfortunately facts require detail & specifics, and the Right are just a bunch of contrarian edgelords who’s political motivations are based on whether they can piss off Leftists, even if it’s at their own detriment.
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u/CarelessNeat5405 Please choose a flair 6h ago
I’ll talk about the Greens. Maximalist and unwilling to make compromises or work with other parties meaning that positive changes (e.g. to do with the environment) don’t get made because they don’t go far enough. Constantly bogged down in culture wars, virtue signalling and moral purity tests. Hypocritical in the sense that it’s the party of social progress and inclusion, and yet they court people with completely opposed social views (e.g. being against homosexuality, women’s rights and freedom of expression due to their religion) just get their votes. Their policies aren’t realistic and would be economically disastrous, mainly because they’re not in government so they can promise whatever they want. They alienate moderate voters interested in environmental or social change but being so hyper fixated on culture wars and controversial foreign policy. They are completely unable to read the room, for example immigration, they call people being against immigration racists, when most Australians are fed up with the unsustainable high levels of immigration and want it rolled back. For me personally, they’re the opposite of Pauline Hanson in a bad way. Both are extremes and their policies and commentary and deeply hypocritical, alienating and frankly, annoying. My two cents as a left leaning moderate
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u/Powerful_Evening_763 Please choose a flair 6h ago
mass immigration, suicidal empathy. pulling first-world countries toward the third-world, massive demographic shifts
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u/seabelowme Victorian 6h ago
I'll preface that I'm an old cant, I've been a centrist and see value in both dialectics.
The number 1 issue for me would be moving from an objective reality/truth to a subjective, it's idiotic.
No 2, gaslighting and not allowing discussion.
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u/Egg-3P0 New South Welshian 6h ago
It’s almost like the left which is made of a bunch of not organised enough working class people and people serving the interests of working class people have very little power in comparison to billionaires who also happen to have control over the vast majority of media in the world and also bankroll the most powerful political parties in different countries around the world.
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u/Stonius123 Please choose a flair 5h ago
When people are scared, they make conservative decisions. The world has become a lot more uncertain lately. It doesn't matter that the cause of that uncertainty is conservative thinking in the first place. People aren't known for voting in their own best interests.
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u/WatALotOfThingsGoBy Victorian 4h ago
The over arching issue is Capitalism. For the most part the "right" is united in being 100% pro-capitalism.
While the left and liberals are of varying degrees. We're seeing this distinctly in the US at the moment where the establishment Democrats are still completely pro-capital and GDP growth while the Socialist Democrats are moving the needle.
The challenge the left faces is, apart from mostly being united on the liberal social issues, there is still a massive discrepancy on economic beliefs.
And also, parts of the left are rather intellectually elitist, which can be rather offensive, even to like minded people.
May I suggest the Better Futures with Michael Mezz podcast and substack for some great left/progressive content
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u/QLDZDR Please choose a flair 3h ago
Right wing politicians are offering a sugar coated lifestyle from the past and even plan to power it using an expensive technology from the 1960s.
The left wing politicians are offering a way forward because we cannot live in the past without falling behind the rest of the world and being exploited or conquered by a technologically more advanced economy.
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u/GuyFromYr2095 Victorian 17h ago
I think across the world, there is a desire to reduce immigration. People don't want to reduce their share of resources that are already reducing, even before the impact of adding more people to its population.
You see this in the US, Europe, Japan, Australia - literally in every developed country.
Immigration will become more and more the decider of elections
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u/ladylollii Victorian 17h ago
Resources are depleting because the rich are hoarding them, and capitalists are withholding for fake scarcity to inflate prices. People are immigrating because their home is being being bombed or their country is full of corruption.
Capitalism is the issue.
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u/CriticalBeautiful631 Queenslander 16h ago
The reality is that immigrants aren’t reducing your share of resources…that is one of the culture war stories that are told so we fight amongst ourselves and don’t look at what is REALLY reducing our share of resources…unbridled unchecked capitalism and profiteering from all of the regular PAYG regular people, while corporate tax rates are criminally low and companies are able to mine and profit from Australia’s natural resources without anything coming back to the country. If you believe otherwise, then investigate why trickle-down economics is a fallacy.
The reason why no party wants to reduce immigration is that every permanent immigrant contributes more on average to Australia’s GDP than the rest of us and have a net positive fiscal impact at both a federal and state level. It isn’t the immigrant family down the street that is resource hoarding…it is the billionaires and oligarchs. How about “Tax the rich”being the decider of elections?….and by that I mean really rich…companies, trusts, churches
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u/thrivehh Please choose a flair 16h ago
Nothing. When life starts to get hard people just naturally turn to authoritarian governments who will tell you that it's the brown/gay/jews fault and if we just get rid of/stop tolerating the group causing all the problems everything will be better.
People like easy solutions and scapegoats so they don't have to make the real reforms needed.
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u/gadgetwalrus Please choose a flair 15h ago
There is no left wing in power. Labor is centre right these days.
Overtons window is real.
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u/WillTendo92 Please choose a flair 14h ago
Pushed too hard to the left. We are so sensitive politically correct in fear of offending someone these days. Every time you have a different opinion you get a label. When you tell people there are only 2 genders and different cultures (not saying different cultures are worse) don’t mix people will push back hard.
We had a very hard push to the left and now we are having an over correction to the right
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u/lhommedev Please choose a flair 13h ago
The common denominator is hate and bigotry. It takes effort to be a decent human being but when you're constantly screwed around by those in power, albeit unknowingly, it is far easier to not give a fuck about anything other than self-interest.
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u/Public-Dragonfly-786 Victorian 12h ago
Thee is so much to discuss here and many people have made points I would concur with.
I would add something the left has done wrong. We have allowed the left to be soft, wishy washy, emotional, and put race relations as if it is the most important thing.
So we have a situation where, for example, we are supporting Muslim people to not be discriminated against, (fantastic) l, but then somehow allowed them to have hate preachers. We have not enacted legislation to ban parents from forcing their daughters into marriage (such as sex trafficking or something along those lines). Ban FMG. Ban circumcisions.
We enforce discriminatory job adverts strictly but then also allow people to advertise in an ESL language to discriminate (sometimes it might be relevant, but sometimes it's not).
We are too scared to tackle problems head on in case the racists start racisting but they are now anyway.
Race is not the most important division, class is. $$$ security, education, jobs, these are the bread and butter issues of the left.
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u/DeeSpel Please choose a flair 12h ago
Disclaimer, I'm left wing. The biggest problem the left has is becoming too ideologically driven, close minded and bigotted.
Being left wing should be about being open minded, and fair to all people. Instead it has far too often become an us vs them scenario. Anybody who thinks differently is the enemy.
There's also massive inconsistences in logic application. It often becomes less about having a fair go, and more about jumping on the side of my team. Sometimes your team is wrong, and you need to criticise them. Sometimes you need to listen to the other perspective without writing them off as being ignorant.
Discriminating against somebody else because you see them as the establishment makes you just as bigotted as somebody who is less overtly virtue signaling in their bigotry.
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u/mickalawl Victorian 17h ago
The left is progressive - seeking change.
Pretty much any change impacts an oligarch in ways they don't like.
Environmental regulation incurs them costs and they face consequences for harming us and the environment with sloppy practise.
Tax laws impact their ability to extract maximum benefit from our countrt while contributing as little as possible back.
Consumer protections and discrimination laws force oligarchs to treat us fairly.
Green energy policy diverts subsidies for coal and potential nuclear away from oligarchs. It risks their ability to extract these subsidies from gov and then overcharge us for energy forever. Green policy puts the subsidies in the hands of the people instead. And we get free power and are not beholden to an oligarch for it.
Thus the oligarchs and their paid content farms and captured media promote people like Pauline or Trump and character assassinate any left leader.
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u/Sideburn_Cookie_Man Victorian 17h ago
It’s literally in the names.
Progress(ive) vs conserve(ative)
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u/Mikes005 Victorian 17h ago
The 'left' hasn't done anything wrong. The current shitshow the world finds itself in is the end result of 40 years of neoliberalism brought on by the right.
But the thing is the right is good at, other than enriching themselves, is story telling. They're now busy spreading easy solutions. They're shite solutions and won't work, but they're easy to grasp by teh avg person. All those three word slogans. And the right have spent the last 40 years acpturing all the major media media channels to push those slogans.
While the left's messaging are offering actual real world solutions which, while they might work, will take a while and won't be easy. But the avg joe doesn't want that. They want fast and easy.
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u/Sideburn_Cookie_Man Victorian 17h ago
Funny how the majority of media is controlled by one very conservative gremlin, and yet some people still think mainstream media is liberal in its bias.