• mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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    2 months ago

    Hm… I actually 1,000% agree with you on this part:

    Its a kind of circular straw man where you engage in a moral panic, some one speaks out in defense, then you project the arguments you want them to have made onto them.

    I don’t think I see this discussed nearly enough – Sometimes the left picks up some strawman the right has come up with and actually runs with it, which I’m sure delights the right. It’s a common enough pattern to have a big impact and I basically never see it discussed, so yeah.

    Whats interesting is that they associate the ‘brahmin left’ with issues that I largely associate with RW issues projection (moral panic over transrights/ dont say gay/ book banning/ immigrant crime/ border crisis/ you fucking name it).

    Did they list all these things? I thought it was just trans rights and “defund the police” mostly. I could have missed it?

    I think the author is talking about more of performative leftist stuff. “I put my pronouns on my Starbucks nametag but I have no appetite for starting a union there” style of left that I would also be critical of. But, on the other hand, police reform is a grey area arguably in the core leftist category and the author puts it in the “Brahmin left” category… so yeah, maybe you’re right, and the author is throwing out some stuff that shouldn’t be thrown out (even if it would tactically a “good idea” for appealing to not-politically-conservative-but-not-real-leftist working-class voters.)