this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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That's interesting. It's also my experience that the far left is saturated with defective personalities (and hearing someone else say it is affirming, thank you). I can't imagine most of those people giving the quotes supplied, though. How long ago are you remembering back?
Before someone says "what are you doing then", I'm still doing stuff. I do volunteer work with mainstream parties, and while the pace of improvement is glacial, it actually sticks instead of exploding into terminal infighting drama.
That specific meeting was in 98. But I had been increasing my interest and activity in socialist change for about two years at that point.
After that, I backed away from that specific set of beliefs while I reevaluated exactly what kind of change was really needed, and how it should be achieved.
I ended up less radical, and a little less focused on the exact dogma, while shifting towards more of a hope of the kind of social structure that some of the nordic countries have going. But I still think that the U.S. is going to require a non peaceful revolution to pull us back from the brink of fascism. I hope a peaceful revolution is possible, very, very much.
But I've also seen what you said, that the general left is too prone to infighting. And there's a ton of lip service without the willingness to sacrifice comfort.
That's why I tend to focus my limited resources towards reform in practice. I just don't see an actual revolution, peaceful or otherwise, happening in my lifetime.
Ah. Yes, things changed a lot over the next couple decades. The last anti-idpole people were just being purged right as I became aware of goings-on in the community. I'm glad it went that way instead of the other, and people of all sorts were in the room, but in the end the exact extent of acceptance became a new thing to fight over. Is furry stuff a fetish or a type of queer identity? Is vegetarianism anti-indigenous? Are poor, conservative white people potential converts, or something like Marx's "petty bourgeoisie"? What about, like, Hindu traditionalists? These would all be good things to hash out, but polite debate is not valued.
Man, I wish Lemmy had a follow user feature. It sounds like you went through some of the same stuff I did but in gen X times.
Also, heads up that this instance is run by the Lemmy developers, who happen to be very active members of the far left. They can be ban-happy sometimes.