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Originally Posted by elly63
What are they, because a whole lotta people seem to be wondering about it. So how about it, when has a leftist gone too far in their ideology so mainstream leftists will disengage from them?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
I am very interested in hearing rousseau's viewpoint, as he is one of my favourite posters on here. And I am also one of those who is wondering.
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Thanks. Aside from the obvious US example of the Clinton-Sanders split versus Trump's alt-right big tent, there are loads of examples of extreme left chicanery that the mainstream left/centre-left consider out of bounds: Antifa, anarchists marching in streets and breaking windows, and the identitarian nonsense going on in universities right now come to mind.
With people on the right generally being more binary and farther along the spectrum when it comes to simplistic thinking (right/wrong, good/bad, us/them etc.), they see nuance and engagement in discussion by the reasonable left/centre-left as tantamount to endorsement. It's the extreme/identitarian/SJW left with the free speech problem right now. The malaise in academia that Jordan Peterson et al. are pushing back against is needed, and from what I can tell the left is hardly monolithic when it comes to the positions people hold on this. The "no-platform" idiots are noisy and have signs, but they don't represent the mushy, apathetic lefty middle.
I think we're trying to measure tacit endorsement on the left and right here. It's pretty obvious that the crazies on the right have infused into the conservative mainstream to a far, far greater degree than on the other side of the political spectrum. Because Trump. And Palin, Bush Jr and Reagan. Principled conservatives decrying the extremist right get drowned out in the hub-bub because the US skews so heavily to the right in a First World context.
Think about it: if you wrote a movie script ten years ago about buffoonish US president in which he comments on a Nazi/white nationalist rally in Virginia by saying "there are very fine people on both sides," it would have been turned down for being too far-fetched.
And you think the right has clearer boundaries than the left? Are you high?