Israel-Hamas War 2023

[OttoVonBismarck]

Views on transgenderism aren't left or right, people of both spectrums can hold the full range of views on them.

[Josquius]

Views on transgenderism aren't left or right, people of both spectrums can hold the full range of views on them.

Yes.
But as I explained people are complicated and tend not to adhere exactly to have all their views at the same point of the spectrum.

But if you look at the core values of right and left.
The right is about traditional social orders and hierarchies.
Trans people clearly threaten these thus are to be opposed.
The left is about social equality and egalitarianism - just leave the trans people alone dude.
It's clear that as much as people have a collection of views from across the spectrum we can roughly map where they sit on individual issues.

And yep. Again. The world is complicated. A plethora of exceptions to general rules and weird quirks out there. Like Iran which sees transexualism as a way to enforce LGBT people slotting into the traditional order.

[Razgovory]

Going back to the core tangent, considering general core beliefs of left wingers, does it really make more logical sense that some left wingers hate Israeli foreign policy because they hate Jews or that they hate Jews because they hate Israeli foreign policy?

It makes sense for both.  There were leftists who hated Jews before Israel.

[The Minsky Moment]

This sort-of agrees, and sort-of disagrees with your assessment.  He defined right wing versus left wing as what thinkers thought the state of man in nature was.  For the right he quoted Thomas Hobbes, that man in the state of nature led a life that was "Nasty, brutish and short".  In Hobbes view, you needed all of society to improve the human condition - the state, family, the church - all of it.  Only with those external influences could humanity be improved.  This was the traditional right-wing view.

Filmer, who was Hobbes' opponent, would have been a better exemplar for the ancestor of the political right in the Anglo-American political tradition.  Hobbes of course is more tricky to deal with.

[Threviel]

In most European political traditions the liberals are on the right (at least since socialism became big) and they have a far better track record when it comes to progressive politics than the socialists...

The left/right divide should be put on the dustbin of history.

[The Minsky Moment]

In most European political traditions the liberals are on the right (at least since socialism became big) and they have a far better track record when it comes to progressive politics than the socialists...

The left/right divide should be put on the dustbin of history.

In Europe I think that the identification of "Liberal" with the right was more a postwar phenomenon in light of the discrediting of the right-wing nationalist parties and continuing decline of religion. With right-wing nationalism making a comeback and soft authoritarian regimes cropping up in Europe, it looks like that may have been an anomaly.  The identification of "liberalism" with economic libertarianism was always a misunderstanding of liberal thought and in this sense, the American political spectrum captures the ideas more accurately.

[Josquius]

Going back to the core tangent, considering general core beliefs of left wingers, does it really make more logical sense that some left wingers hate Israeli foreign policy because they hate Jews or that they hate Jews because they hate Israeli foreign policy?

It makes sense for both.  There were leftists who hated Jews before Israel.

And there's people on the right who believe in robust social security.
There'll always be people who believe any odd combination of things.
Historically where you had a left winger as an anti-semite which was purely born out of left wing thinking and not an example of an issue where they swayed right, this was based upon conspiracies about Jewish bankers and suchlike. Not about the nature of Jews as an Other, that manner of hate is an example of a (bad) right wing view of the world rather than a (bad) left wing view of the world.
This follows in the modern day with an Israel-first route to hate rather than a Jews-first route to hate being far more common.

[Razgovory]

It's true that people Anti-Zionism is probably the more common gateway to antisemitism than conspiracy theories among  educated white, leftwing Westerners; they are exposed to a great deal of Arab propaganda.  But I wouldn't totally discount the "Jews own everything" idea.  It's pretty widespread.  In the end, they arrive at the same place.  As such, fighting anti-Zionism should be top priority.

[Josquius]

It's true that people Anti-Zionism is probably the more common gateway to antisemitism than conspiracy theories among  educated white, leftwing Westerners; they are exposed to a great deal of Arab propaganda.  But I wouldn't totally discount the "Jews own everything" idea.  It's pretty widespread.

Maybe in the US.
Its really not here.

In the end, they arrive at the same place.  As such, fighting anti-Zionism should be top priority.

No. Fuck Zionism. Fuck anti-semitism.

[crazy canuck]

Jos, Raz is not going to be convinced that anti-Zionism is anything but anti-semitism.  Why do you keep going around in circles with him?

[Razgovory]

So you support the gateway to antisemitism?  You are in Switzerland right now, correct?  According to the latest poll (which is about 10 years old), about 1/4 people there harbor antisemitic beliefs.  That's fairly widespread.  https://global100.adl.org/country/switzerland/2014

[Grey Fox]

He's in the north of England. Some of you guys really suck at remembering where other members live.

I can pin point BB's on google map with all the hints he's given over the years, ffs.

[Threviel]

Ohhh, where am I?

[Grey Fox]

South Sweden, south of Goteborg.

(V......)

[Valmy]

BvS mentioned TERFs.  That's not so much a right vs left issues, but a left-on-left issue.  TERFs attack trans rights as being an attack on women's rights.

It is because they think there are two genders: the oppressors and the oppressed. Men being oppressors and they see trans rights as a way for men to do evil. It kind of blows me away how this hateful and misandrist view is held up as "protecting women's rights" the second it turns on trans people. Like because they hate trans people so much suddenly the rest of their vile ideology gets whitewashed. If they hate trans people that much, they can't be all bad.

I don't think you are the source of that BB, but I sure as fuck have noticed it.