Progressive extremism is caused by Conservative extremism

[Scholar]

A lot of people accuse progressives of being extreme without understand why they hold such extreme positions in the first place.

I will keep this short, but the problem is pretty basic, if we take immigration as an example:

If there is a certain group immigrating the country, conservatives will seek to stop that immigration from happening. To do so, they will use arguments that the immigrants are, for example, more likely to commit crime. Now, this could be a reality, but the problem is that the progressive cannot ever admit that (assuming that it was true that immigrants cause more crime) this is a reality because as soon as they did, they would validate the extreme position of the conservatives. The conservatives just need an excuse to ban immigraiton, and even if it was a 2% higher instance of crime, all of them would rally behind that number and feel justified to ban immigrants. So what the progressives have to do is deny reality. They cannot ever admit that the higher instance of crime exists, because they know this might convince the masses of anti-immigration policy.

 

And this applies to everything we see.

Trans issues: Conservatives will basically use anything as a boogeyman to severely restrict these issues. The risk of a false positive among a trans person to them would justify taking away all trans treatments for adolescence, therefore progressives must deny any significant risks of false positives among individuals who identify as trans.

Abortion: Progressives do not admit that abortion can ever be immoral, it is always "My body my choice", even if the child is already fairly developed, because conservatives use any amount of risk to a child as reason to ban all of abortion. This leads to the extremist position that all abortion must be legal.

Islamophobia: Conservatives will use any negative aspect of islam to justify severe discrimination against muslim individuals, as well as banning individuals from immigrating from war zones. This leads to progressives denying all problems with islam, staunchly opposing even feminists who criticize islam for it's patriarchal attitudes.

Gender Identity: Progressives will accept any gender construct because conservatives use the same reasons that mock "Cat-Gender" as they use to mock completely valid identities like non-binary or transgender. This leads them to view any resistance to any gender construct as deep discrimination, radicalizing them in the acceptance for all sorts of genders.

Consanguinamory rights: Progressives will radically accept any incestuous relationship, even between parent and child, and deny problematic dynamics, because conservatives will dishonestly deploy "power dynamics" or "social cohesion" arguments to justify their persecution of cousin and sibling relationships, even though these standards are blatantly unreasonable. This leads to progressive denying the potential risks of such relationships entirely, because any admission will give credence to the inhumane treatment such minorities experience by conservatives.

 

Notice that the conservatives then use the extermism of the progressives to justify their staunchly conservative stances. "Well, clearly we can see where all of this is going, if we allow them an inch, they will degenerate and leave us into the end of civilization!". But this is literally a self-fullfilling prophecy.

The progressives have such difficulty ever admitting problems in their object of activism because the conservatives apply completely unreasonable standards to those problems. A single terrorist attack justifies banning people coming from a war zone entirely. A single misidentified transgender person justifies going back to mocking the idea of transgenderism as degenerate. A single person who goes by "catgender" justifies dismissing the entire idea of non-traditional genders. A single immoral or unreasonable abortion justifies banning all of abortion. A single toxic relationship between two siblings justifies imprisoning and publically shaming all of them.

 

So the progressives have it difficult here because they have to fight the urge to become extreme, which is not easy when the other side will exploit any problem with their causes to frame them as degenerate.

 

 

Edited March 10 by Scholar

[Hojo]

I think whats happening is that the sides are switching. The left is switching to where the right was and the right is switching to the left. Its very interesting to see they are using to see the exact same arguments being reversed and it works. God is very complex.

Edited March 10 by Hojo

[Scholar]

1 hour ago, Hojo said:

I think whats happening is that the sides are switching. The left is switching to where the right was and the right is switching to the left. Its very interesting to see they are using to see the exact same arguments being reversed and it works. God is very complex.

It's the shift, in the US, from a dominant blue to a dominat orange culture. Green is more collectivist and restrictive on freedoms, like blue was, and orange is generally for liberty.

But it's a bit more complicated than that.

[Basman]

The issue is with group-think and opposing ideologies entrenching themselves. It is a very unserious style of politics because it doesn't really concern itself with what would actually be best for society. That would require questioning one's political excesses.

Ultimately the extremes of either side don't matter as much as moderates when it comes to swaying votes because extremists aren't open to having their minds changed (and only represent a minority). Effective progressive policy would have to be pragmatic and play to conservative values. That is why I believe center-left parties to be superior to green or communist parties (because they are circlejerks).