Why does the 'hard' left show more animosity towards the 'soft' left than the right?

[qdouble]

Watching Cornell West on the Daily show and listening to BoBers, I find is it very intriguing that amongst the genuine, non-right-wing trolls, there seems to be so much more angst against those who are slightly less liberal than them, than for people who stand at the polar opposite of them.

What is the rationale?

[ZombieHorde]

1. They don't.

Blac Bloc isn't running around burning minivans.

[qdouble]

2. may I should have said "certain members"

many leftist don't do it, but I don't understand the segment that hate who you would think are their allies

[ZombieHorde]

8. If you're talking about the protestors at the convention,

then I suspect they feel betrayed. Scorned lovers can be dramatic.

[LeftyMom]

3. Why is the center(left?) so much cozier with the right right than the left?

A Republican turned Independent with a track record for racism and austerity inflicted largely on schools gave half this forum the vapors earlier this week.

[highprincipleswork]

6. No kidding!!!!

[auntpurl]

12. If you're talking about Bloomberg

He was there for a specific purpose; it was very well conceived, and he was there to HELP HILLARY WIN, which is more than I can say for the disrupters and protesters. So yeah, I'm more aligned with Bloomberg in this instance than I am with people ostensibly in my own party who state they're going to vote for Stein or Trump.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

13. And if Scalia had talked at the convention...?

Any port in a storm?

[auntpurl]

16. If Scalia had been there for the specific purpose of

talking to Republicans in the viewing audience about how Hillary would make better choices for the Supreme Court than Trump, sure. Hell, I hope Scalia is in a very hot place right now. But we have an election to win.

[Nye Bevan]

29. When the "storm" is the possibility of President Donald Trump,

I will take any port that I can.

[LeftyMom]

14. What part of HES A GODDAMN RACIST wasn't clear?

"I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little" -Bloomberg, 2013

Statistics had just shown that 87% of stop and frisks were of black and latino men.

[auntpurl]

17. If Bloomberg had been there to talk about race issues

then I wouldn't approve. He was there to talk to Moderates/Independents at home to burst the myth that Trump is a successful businessman and would therefore run the country like a successful business. It was good strategy and I hope he continues to stump for Hillary. I'm not ideologically pure enough not to accept help with white guys in Ohio, Michigan, PA, etc.

[LeftyMom]

20. Bloomberg can't even help with the outer buroughs. Plus he's a fucking racist.

[auntpurl]

21. I disagree.

I think he can help very much with moderate/Independent white men. And in that we are literally trying to beat a fascist demagogue, I really don't give a shit who helps us along the way.

[athena]

25. I agree.

There were many things in his speech I disagreed with, but it was clearly aimed at white men who usually vote Republican or stay home -- businessmen like Bloomberg. Given the character of the person running for president on the Republican side, such a speech makes sense at the Democratic convention. I believe we will see many "Hillary Republicans" this time around, but we must work hard and knock on every door.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

34. It's a lack of ethical perspective, IMHO.

The enemy of my enemy...even when they are a Republucan D-bad is not a valid excuse.

[unitedwethrive]

4. Good question!

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

5. Which is worse, ignorance or apostasy?

When I was in university I was similarly baffled by the three rival feminist factions who publicly attacked one-another relentlessly while seemingly indifferent to some of the religious fundamentalist factions on campus with whom they had genuine differences.

[HereSince1628]

22. I think you've tapped a productive line of thinking about this.

It's not rational but emotional, and it's not about politics but group-relationships.

It may sting more to be rejected by people who you think should be with you than by people you assume are against you.

[Doodley]

7. I think a lot of it is to do with the cult of personality

They saw in Sanders somebody they believe is honorable, shares their concerns, speaks in a plain language they relate to, and is accountable to them, but not to special interests and superpacs. He stood out from anything they had seen in politics before. Sanders became the personification of their political idealism. He was often their first political romance.

They bought his ideals and often whatever Sanders said, even if they didn't fully understand why, such as his position on TPP. They had bought into the cult of personality, rather than embracing a general direction. For many, he presented a means to political alignment for the first time. Trump and the GOP, however, doesn't represent them, and they never had any expectations that they would. Their anger (misplaced, in my opinion) is directed at those they perceive have broken their attachment to the ideals and the cult of Sanders. As bad as Trump is, he did not do that to them.

[ZombieHorde]

10. I think there may be something to that.

I viewed Sanders as a "lesser evil," so his loss wasn't a difficult blow for me.

[auntpurl]

19. I would have loved for the media to have asked any of those young people

what the TPP actually is.

[T_i_B]

9. When I was protesting against the Iraq war....

I came a cross a lot of people from the far left. Many, many different parties and factions, all with very similar agenda's, all fighting each other. The likes of the Socialist Workers Party clearly inspired this.

[Sherman A1]

11. The rationale

is a media sideshow for ratings in this and many cases. Yes, people have differing opinions and there are differences within any group or groups of people. Cornell West or a David Dukes really only represent themselves and are find themselves on these shows to generate spin, ratings and to fill air time with the hope to generate enough controversy that you will continue to watch the show (and hopefully support the advertisers).

I strongly urge all to turn off the TV Cable and Broadcast news and similar programing.

[Enrique]

15. because they believe it will make a difference

they have influence within the Democratic Party, they have no influence on the Republican party.

[Nay]

28. That's my take on it, too. We only have influence on other members of

our party, so our engagement is with them, not Republicans, who have shown themselves to be impervious to logic. Many of us have Pub relatives, so we've given up on trying to reason with such people.

[Trust Buster]

18. NARCISSISM - They are perfect. The battle to prove that to themselves is in the parsing my friends.

[MrScorpio]

23. I think that it all depends on who you're talking about.

I consider myself part of the "hard left," however, instead of coming from the academic/radical "hippie" movement, I'm from the Midwest Urban, labor based and black empowerment wing.

Unlike the conceptual wing, that postulates on obscure proposals and things like organic farming, we're more immersed in urban policies, police misconduct and idea that government should be used as a force for the general good.

The BoBers seem to drawn commonality with the far right Libertarian types that have invaded the Republican party. Actually, this should come to a comfort to us, as this is NOT where most of the Democratic working class rank and file is positioned.

Personally, I take what coming out of the BoBers as nothing more than just plain old whining. They're having a temper tantrum, because unlike the labor wing, they're not used to negotiating and cooperating. They want it all and if they don't get it all, they'd rather burn everything down.

Frankly, the best thing to do is ignore them. There's not enough of them to be significant.

[treestar]

24. Interesting

They do spend more time on that than they do criticizing the right.

[thucythucy]

26. Reminds me of the far left in Germany in 1932.

They spent much of their time and energy denouncing "social fascists"--that is, the Social Democratic Party--than they did the actual fascists about to take power. They even voted with the Nazis in the Reichstag, in a successful attempt to gridlock German democracy and hasten what they thought would be their revolution.

As I recall, that didn't turn out so very well, least of all for them. Hitler was quite happy to accept their support, and then chuck them all into concentration camps as soon as he could.

[KingCharlemagne]

32. The KPD in late Weimar saw Hitler and the Nazis as the "icebreaker" that

would usher in the final proletarian revolution. Shame that it took the lives of 26 million Soviets to prove that hypothesis demonstrably wrong!

[ismnotwasm]

27. I don't consider the Busties hard left

The "hard left" wouldn't have much to do with Bernie--much less Hillary--considering him participating in a system too flawed for repair. Instead, a few from that demographic saw him the kind of a last hope for that system, as he dangles on the edge of actual socialism.

I think the majority of the most bitter, are actually fairly new to politics, or a least have a limited understanding of how they actually work.

West, at this point is mostly an opportunist, or at least that's how he comes across.

[loyalsister]

30. The strongest supporters I know are advocates for poor people

They know that Bernie Sanders is the first person they have heard speak angrily about the fact that there are people who are working more than 1 job and still living in poverty. What many poor people have heard and continue to hear is how great the economy was under the president when their kids were born, and now all about the recent recovery that they are not a part of.

Why is it so incomprehensible that people feel betrayed by the left of center politicians who have been preaching optimism and patriotism when they know that people are hungry and see nothing on the horizon that indicates their children will have a better life. They do not see themselves or their chldren as part of the rosy picture Dems keep telling them about- EVER!

They were slightly encouraged that Sanders was paying attention beyond a throw away line in a speech about how great the US is and how our candidates are going to stand up for the middle class.

Another question, why is the center left so callous that they refuse to try to understand the reality of what it might be like for people who do not see themselves or their children as part of the optimistic image painted at the convention. Why would they not be angry at the people who are trying to sell them hope when they have no reason to have it?

But from 2005 to 2014, the subsequent period encapsulating the Great Recession and so-called recovery, just a third of wage earners saw their incomes rise. The vast majority of earners – around 65 to 70 percent – saw their paychecks decline or stagnate. In the United States, the proportion with stagnant wages was a full 81 percent.

The new report, entitled “Poorer Than Their Parents? Flat Or Falling Incomes In Advanced Economies,” comes from the McKinsey Global Institute. As the title suggests, the study examined the prospects for over 800 million workers in the 25 wealthiest countries and found that the rising generation is at serious risk of ending up poorer than their parents.

http://inequality.org/poorer-parents/

[aikoaiko]

31. Hurt from perceived/actual betrayal and the possibilities of conversations and actual change.

Last edited Sat Jul 30, 2016, 11:19 AM - Edit history (1)

I asked a similar question when I saw BLM and TNC were particularly hard on Bernie - harder on him than HRC or the Republicans. As a white liberal-ish Bernie primary supporter I was confused and angry as it appeared to me that activists were taking down the candidate most likely to support deeper level reform.

Betrayal: white liberals were ignoring or not taking seriously systemic white supremacy especially in the area of police brutality.

Conversations and Change: white liberals were willing, at times, to talk and listen. Those conversations had some impact on candidates positions - at least changing language and emphasis.

In the end, many BLM and TNC ended up supporting Bernie in the primaries. Many more than I expected.

Of course it not that simple and there were and are a lot of other issues at play, but I learned quite a bit about the role of conflict within political movements.

[Johnny2X2X]

33. Bernie Frank

Frank had a nice retort to West. There is zero indication Hillary has ever been influenced by Wall Street. He then went on to talk about how Wall Street has even paid him to speak and he is the coauthor of their worst nightmare, Dodd-Frank.

People assume Wall Street is buying influence with who they donate too, while that might be true in some cases, what they are mostly doing is buying stability. Hillary will be much more stable for the markets than Trump, that's why Wall Street backs her, simple as that.

People just assume a quid quo pro when there is simply no evidence of anything being done in return.

[Calculating]

35. The Right has a similar division

The hard right typically hate moderate republicans. Usually they refer to them as RINO's(Republicans in Name Only). Likewise, the hard left hate moderate democrats and consider them traitors to the progressive cause.

[annabanana]

36. authoritarians are authoritarians first...

100% personality driven, looking for someone to tell them what to do, looking to tell someone what to do..

supersedes policy every time...

[Throd]

37. Zealots always despise those "less committed" to the cause.

This applies to politics as well as religion. For the far left, their politics IS their religion.