Some more thoughts on the Left, the Right, the Center, and myself

[Travis B.]

Welp, I was just banned from r/Socialism_101 on Reddit for alleged 'liberalism' (read: being critical of vanguardism and the failures of Marxist-Leninist states)...

[malloc]

Some more political navel-gazing by me.

I sometimes wonder how, with the personal traits that I have, I managed it to avoid becoming part of the most repulsive and vulgar parts of the extreme Right.

To paraphrase Salvador Dalí, I could say that the only difference between an extremely misogynist fascist and me is that I’m not a misogynist fascist.

First, there’s the demographic traits: I’m male, white, straight, and cisgendered. Then there’s the personality: I’m mostly your stereotypical nerd (except for not being all that good at advanced STEM stuff). I’m mostly a loner – I did have some great friends back in school and university, but when I lost contact with them a while later, I didn’t make new friends to replace them, at least not in real life.

Sounds a lot like the anxieties I have felt for quite some time, although with the added sting of coming from a part of the US renowned through the generations for its reactionary politics. Oddly enough, the reactionary tide sweeping the world these days has kind of lessened my anxiety over this issue. It feels rather silly to agonize over my own problematic background when even countries like France edge ever closer to electing fascists.

[Raphael]

Sounds a lot like the anxieties I have felt for quite some time, although with the added sting of coming from a part of the US renowned through the generations for its reactionary politics. Oddly enough, the reactionary tide sweeping the world these days has kind of lessened my anxiety over this issue. It feels rather silly to agonize over my own problematic background when even countries like France edge ever closer to electing fascists.

It's not so much anxiety and more like curiosity in my case.

[Raphael]

Welp, I was just banned from r/Socialism_101 on Reddit for alleged 'liberalism' (read: being critical of vanguardism and the failures of Marxist-Leninist states)...

Not sure what that post is doing in this thread, but aren't the political parts of Reddit generally cesspools of various forms of toxidity, anyway?

[Travis B.]

Welp, I was just banned from r/Socialism_101 on Reddit for alleged 'liberalism' (read: being critical of vanguardism and the failures of Marxist-Leninist states)...

Not sure what that post is doing in this thread, but aren't the political parts of Reddit generally cesspools of various forms of toxidity, anyway?

I posted it in this thread because it didn't seem to fit in any of the other political threads on here.

[WeepingElf]

Welp, I was just banned from r/Socialism_101 on Reddit for alleged 'liberalism' (read: being critical of vanguardism and the failures of Marxist-Leninist states)...

Not sure what that post is doing in this thread, but aren't the political parts of Reddit generally cesspools of various forms of toxidity, anyway?

I posted it in this thread because it didn't seem to fit in any of the other political threads on here.

I don't know about Reddit, but such problems seem to be common in the (anti)social media. As I already said elsewhere, when I was looking for a Facebook group on Indo-European linguistics, I found that all but two included the expression "Aryan race" in their descriptions. Of the two that didn't, one did not admit me because I lacked a relevant academic degree, so I joined the other one. It turned out to be of fair, though not very good, quality. Most of the traffic is not particularly interesting (questions of the "Is word X related to word Y?" kind and the like), but at least there is no racism or other extremist politics going on there, and when people reject ideas posted there, they do so mostly politely.