Is the left partly responsible for the radicalization of the right?

[enchanted]

On 18/08/2025 at 5:38 PM, Jacob Morres said:

I saw this on my twitter newsfeed and it had me think. What is yall's pov of this?

Yes definitely, when the DNC  unfairly and unethically shut down Bernie Sanders they screwed the country over. They deserve everything they are getting now. 

Bernie is one the most skilled politicians and communicators of our times. Too bad his own party chose corporate, centrist, big money, statues quo candidates instead. 

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, enchanted said:

Too bad his own party

Bernie is literally not a Democrat.

So no, it's not his party. Which is why they snub him. Of course professional Dems will not want to elect a guy who isn't even a Dem.

This is another blindspot within leftist thinking. Leftists want Bernie so bad that they fail to reason properly about why he lost. Bernie does not have wide enough appeal to win major national elections. But progressives cannot admit that fact into their worldview, so they double-down on demonizing corporate Dems.

Edited August 28 by Leo Gura

[Leo Gura]

13 minutes ago, enchanted said:

The biggest blind spot on the left was letting Trump win by running a status quo candidate.

That's blindspot of the center.

Yeah, it's a shitty dynamic to be caught between lunatic right-wingers and conformist centrists.

[enchanted]

5 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That's blindspot of the center.

Yeah, it's a shitty dynamic to be caught between lunatic right-wingers and conformist centrists.

Ya that's why I believe Bernie would have won as he's the left's answer to Trump. (Or at least a good example of one). 

Edited August 29 by enchanted

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, enchanted said:

I believe Bernie would have won

This was tried and failed. Bernie is incapable of winning a national primary. And he didn't plan to run.

[enchanted]

44 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

This was tried and failed. Bernie is incapable of winning a national primary. And he didn't plan to run.

My understanding is that Bernie was popular and could have won but the Dems unfairly rigged it against him. https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/

He is an incredibly persuasive and authentic communicator. Bernie is an example of conscious politics. 

[Leo Gura]

18 minutes ago, enchanted said:

My understanding is that Bernie was popular and could have won but the Dems unfairly rigged it against him.

This is a poor argument because we had an election after that, in 2020, where Bernie lost fair and square against Biden.

Leftists are in denial about.

Quote

Bernie is an example of conscious politics.

That's why he lost.

Unconscious politics beat conscious politics. It's like a saint fighting against a psychopath. The psychopath will win.

Edited August 29 by Leo Gura

[Emerald]

13 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That's why he lost.

Unconscious politics beat conscious politics. It's like a saint fighting against a psychopath. The psychopath will win.

It's like the movie The Dark Crystal, if you've seen it... where there is this species of celestial beings called the Urskeks who settle on an Earth-like planet. And there's only like 10 of these beings on the Earth-like planet.

And thousands of years prior to the beginning of the movie, they end up deliberately splitting themselves into two halves... a good half and an evil half in an attempt to get rid of evil and become more good/perfect.

So, this splitting in an attempt to "be good and perfect" and to be "rid of evil"... actually creates an autonomous evil race of powerful beings.

And the good half of each being is called a Mystic... where they are good but lumbering and impotent with no power.

And the evil half of each being is called a Skeksis... where they are evil but dynamic and powerful. And they are the rulers of the entire planet. 

This symbolism depicts what happens, when a person (or collective of people) polarize into an identity of "goodness" as this disambiguates the identity from it what is deemed as "badness".... and this "badness" then takes hold of the person (or collective of people) in denigrated ways.

And the identity of goodness on the Left is oriented around compassion while power is discarded as evil.

And the identity of goodness on the Right is oriented around strength/power while compassion is discarded as weakness.

So, you end up with these extreme expressions in the world of "weak goodness" and "powerful evil"... and that leads to the "powerful evil" being FAR MORE LIKELY to be entrenched in positions of power.

This is why unconscious politics prevails. Those who identify with goodness in the ethical/compassionate sense of the word, would have an identity crisis if they actually used their power and strength.

They would have to grapple with the problem of their own disowned evil... as opposed to being on the side of goodness fighting against the evil.

[Leo Gura]

8 minutes ago, Emerald said:

This is why unconscious politics prevails.

I have a more mundane explanation for why unconscious politics prevails:

Because the majority of mankind is ignorant and unconscious.

Why did Trump win?

Because millions of Americans are simply politically ignorant. If we just properly educated Americans, a guy like Trump could never win an election.

Edited August 29 by Leo Gura

[Emerald]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

I have a more mundane explanation for why unconscious politics prevails:

Because the majority of mankind is ignorant and unconscious.

Why did Trump win?

Because millions of Americans are simply ignorant.

It certainly is ignorance.

But the specific flavor of ignorance that's happening is the literal original sin of ignorance.

And that original sin of ignorance is the projection of the dichotomy of "good and evil" onto ourselves and others... and creating huge internal and external splits.

This then produces shame and the tendency for those looking to wash themselves clean of shame to externalize that shame onto a scapegoated "bad guy".

Trump won because precisely he unapologetically evoked the archetypal "good and evil" story and gave the ignorant people a collection of "bad guys" to scapegoat to feel like the "good guy" in relation to... and to feel like "the innocent victim" while making the scapegoats "the villain who is both strong and weak."

That's what Fascism is all about, at the end of the day. It plays upon people's desires to be the good victim and/or good hero in relation to an unambiguously evil villainous other. 

Why else do you think that the Devil tempted Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

[Raze]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

This was tried and failed. Bernie is incapable of winning a national primary. And he didn't plan to run.

No it wasn’t. A primary election is not the same as a general election. You can lose in a primary (or win in a primary) and get the opposite result in a general, it’s a completely different circumstance and electorate. 
 

The reason why they don’t admit Bernie doesn’t have wide appeal is because it is contrary to evidence. The only time he lost were primaries where a small amount of mostly older democrats voted, his “wider appeal” was not tested here.

Polls consistently showed he did better among independents and even republicans in hypothetical general match ups than his primary opponents. 

Primaries test appeal among the party base, general elections test the appeal among the general electorate. Sanders loss proved he lacked appeal to the party base. Hillary and Kamala’s loss proved they lost among the general electorate. Concluding that we should keep going with Hillary and Kamala esque status quo politics for general appeal makes no sense based on these data points. 

Edited August 29 by Raze

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, Raze said:

You can lose in a primary (or win in a primary) and get the opposite result in a general

Yeah, well... winning primaries is necessary.

Again, be careful with pie-in-sky notions of politics. Stay grounded in how politics actually works, not how you wish it worked.

[Dorchik]

On 8/19/2025 at 4:29 AM, Leo Gura said:

Look, every atom in the universe reacts to every other.

Culture wars are like a pinball bouncing around the machine. There's reactionary behavior all around.

The right-wing is always reacting to progress. That's been happening since the beginning of humankind.

500,000 years ago there was some right-wing caveman reacting against not being allowed to rape his own mother.

Not sure its an accurate framing. Old money/power is a better one IMO (eg Bitcoin, the Internet etc).

[Jodistrict]

My theory for why politics is so fucked up is that the people who get in power are the people who most want power.   So, instead of getting policies that affect the greater good, you get an unbalanced system that serves special interests.  The trans issue gets priority over every other issue even though they are a negligible minority.  Kennedy gets power because he is obsessed with vaccines.  Stephen Miller is obsessed with immigration.  Etc.    Ancient Athens had a kleroterion machine that would select officials at random from the eligible citizens.   If a random citizen was elected president, he would do something useful like fill in all the potholes for the entire country.  It would be a common sense action that would improve the life of every citizen equally.   Academically derived categories and DEI would be unnecessary. 

[zazen]

Liberalism was good in that it expanded the world towards a more universal and unlimited identity that paved the way for global frameworks - international law and institutions. Those laws and institutions are mechanisms of coordination and arbitration between the limited identities within them (nations, tribes) - the intended aim being to limit power dynamics between those limited identities and bring order to the world. But the abstraction of laws and the aspirations of a universal identity doesn't erase the fact that limited identities or power dynamics exist.

What may have started to bring co-existence between different identities and their interests, became a mechanism of eliminating those identities and sidelining their interests for the interests of empire. Liberalism ironically became the perfect trojan horse to justify uni-polar imperialism, that is disguised as moral leadership - a liberal crusade led by a US-Western hegemony that see's the world as their dominion. And those within that dominion need saving - including the natives within their own nations who need saving from their own limited identities and backward conservatism.

That epistemic supremacy leads to bad domestic and foreign policy - which obviously results in the backlash we are seeing today at home (domestic populism) and abroad (wars of empire).

Western liberal elites act as though universal frameworks (in a uni-polar world they lead) supersede civilizational, religious, and national identities. Liberals dismiss limited identities (national, religous, civilizational) as mere constructs (outdated and backwards) while simultaneously elevating and weaponising their own constructs (international law, rights, institutions) against those limited identities.  Foundational identities are treated as merely decorative -  unlike the identity of a universalist oneness that everyone should transcend to.

It is so righteous and self-absorbed to the point it doesn’t recognize other identities (limited identities) as legitimate. It sees anyone's freedom anywhere, as a threat to its noble supremacy everywhere.  This brings a level of entitlement that disregards local natives in their own countries, as well as disregards others nations sovereignty to exist as a separate pole to their uni-polar order / everyone should dance and orbit solely on their pole.

It views only its own power and use of it as righteous. Other powers don't or shouldn't exist, which would include those powers own spheres and red lines. Instead, they think the whole world is their dominion and sphere.  That’s the mindset which has set the conditions in motion for what’s occurring now in Ukraine for example - another power like Russia, was disregarded as such, along with its own sphere and red lines.

Because liberalism sees no legitimate alternative to itself, it can't coexist - only assimilate and sublimate all other identities for a vague super identity. It tries to dissolve all difference into a singular moral (liberal) order, that ends up provoking the very backlash it claims to be protecting the world from. That backlash is then pathologized and straw manned - which means it never learns from its mistakes at home or abroad.

Edited August 29 by zazen

[enchanted]

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Why did Trump win?

Because millions of Americans are simply politically ignorant. If we just properly educated Americans, a guy like Trump could never win an election.

This is so true. According to the statistics the biggest determining factor of Trump voters is that they don't read the news. Also Kamala lost ground in EVERY SINGLE demographic except 50+ white men. This demographic reads the most news.

Is it also just coincidence that the US is consistently ranked low in global education standards? 

Edited August 29 by enchanted

[enchanted]

clip from the video Leo shared on his blog post about Bernie Sanders

Edited August 29 by enchanted

[Kid A]

On 29.8.2025 at 5:01 AM, Leo Gura said:

I have a more mundane explanation for why unconscious politics prevails:

Because the majority of mankind is ignorant and unconscious.

Why did Trump win?

Because millions of Americans are simply politically ignorant. If we just properly educated Americans, a guy like Trump could never win an election.

This could hardly have been better illustrated than at the Department of Labor building in Washington this week:

 

Edited August 30 by Kid A

[Nercohype]

Raze is so uneducated, biggot, woman hater and raceist. I will fight for womens rights always! I will fight fiercely against this rightwing plague 

Edited August 30 by Nercohype

[Jannes]

22 hours ago, enchanted said:

clip from the video Leo shared on his blog post about Bernie Sanders

!!!

yeah that got me thinking as well. 

He did get some things wrong though, at least the point about that the CDU isnt a democrazy for leading germany with only 28% of votes. The system works differently in Germany, smaller parties come together to built a coalition which reaches 50%. If anything, the far right party is deliberately kicked out from other politicians.