I think this is not true. NPC rhetoric originated with right-wingers; google "I support the current thing" for a distillation. Essentially their argument is that the left cares about a lot of things, and therefore it doesn't care about any of them, people are just conformists and not thinking for themselves, etc. Communists reject this: we have a coherent framework of looking at the world, our position on individual struggles (labor, racism, queer liberation, colonialism, whatever) is informed by that, and so we can have strong beliefs about many issues that are a reflection of our strong central beliefs. Apply the same logic to our enemies.
Conservatives who move, for instance, from hating gay people to hating trans people didn't have a chip swapped out in their heads. They want to maintain patriarchy and oppose any attempts to loosen the straightjacket. They may variously oppose "CRT", "DEI", "ESG"; "PC culture" or "wokeness"; all those oppositions are the same impulse to keep capitalism chugging away to benefit the guys at the top.
There are some funny exceptions in the form of post-hoc rationalization, like how the evangelical groups only began opposing abortion on religious grounds after they realized that legalizing it threatened to undermine patriarchy. But for the most part, any heavy consumer of right-wing social media, conservative activist, or politician has or is coalescing a fairly consistent worldview and we can't beat them if we incorrectly think they're morons.
I agree with almost all of this, but I don't think most of it contradicts OP's premise (so long as we remove the word "literal" from the title). Like:
all those oppositions are the same impulse to keep capitalism chugging away to benefit the guys at the top.
Right. And each of them could be swapped out depending on whether or not they are convenient for capital to oppose or support at any given moment, with the issue of evangelicals and abortion that you pointed out being the perfect example of this in general, not an exception.
But for the most part, any heavy consumer of right-wing social media, conservative activist, or politician has or is coalescing a fairly consistent worldview and we can't beat them if we incorrectly think they're morons.
First of all, I would agree that their worldview can be called consistent in that it is comprised of positions that will always tend towards support for capital, the status quo, and existing hierarchical power structures. But that's a different thing from being inconsistent in terms of hypocrisy or what we might call "internal consistency," like not being totally contradictory. Example, claiming to stand for keeping politics out of games while holding up something like Call of Duty as being apolitical. Or referring to people who care about equality as being "special snowflakes" even as they themselves whinge and blubber about the oppression of whatever group they tie to their sense of identity (invariably the most privileged groups like white, cis-hetero, men, gamers, etc.) It's these kind of culture war issues that are the chips that can be swapped out that I think SFS was talking about and he is right.
Their political positions are not based on any kind of analysis or fundamental principles, but instead shift along with the status quo, which does change over time due to things like technology, even if the overarching deference to the owning class never changes in a capitalist society. These are politics of convenience in a way that communist politics are most definitely not. Maybe it's just semantics, but I would say right wing culture war politics are not arbitrary, but that they are inconistent.
Also, I don't think it's really accurate to lump the rank and file chuds (the larger mass of right wing social media) in with the politicians as a singular class with the same interests that align in support of capital. There are those that get the ball rolling and steer the culture war issues and those that unfortunately will just follow along and be outraged by whatever the fox news or youtube alt-right algorithm or evangelical church tells them is outrageous. Like has been pointed out before, many working class people who identify as right wing do correctly recognize there is something really fucking wrong with this shit society, but they are manipulated into looking in the exact opposite direction of where the problem actually lies. The capitalist class, in part via politicians, are the ones doing the manipulation after having murdered and demonized the left. I think it's fair to say that there are some people who hold and program the chips in OP's analogy, able to cynically swap them in and out to benefit their own ends, but a much larger set of people whose brains are the targets for those chips and who have been trained to accept the swapping without question.
Their political positions are not based on any kind of analysis or fundamental principles, but instead shift along with the status quo, which does change over time due to things like technology, even if the overarching deference to the owning class never changes in a capitalist society. These are politics of convenience in a way that communist politics are most definitely not. Maybe it's just semantics, but I would say right wing culture war politics are not arbitrary, but that they are inconistent.
I've noticed this too, and it's funny because the whole basis of the "NPC support current thing" meme is supposed to be that leftists only hold they opinions they do for social acceptance, while you can see examples of chuds adjusting their opinions depending on who they're talking to. The most common one I've seen is how opinions on climate change will range from "it's not real" when with other hogs, to "it might be real but it's not worth worrying about since this happened at other points in earth's history*, and do you really think humans are significant enough to be a factor?" when around non-political types, to "it's real and human activity is a factor but it's too late so why bother" when around people who have the scientific knowledge to understand and have strong opinions on it.
*this argument works on people who aren't knowledgeable or invested in the topic since it's technically true, but records show the magnitude of changes we've seen in the last century usually take place over thousands of years
re: rank and file - that's why I kind of hedged with "coalescing". There are a lot of self-identified leftists who don't read theory, but they've browsed enough Hexbear or instagram posts or whatever to have some reasonable socialist principles. If we let them off the hook, we have to do the same for heavy consumers of right-wing media. Wasn't doing class analysis really. Of course the Christopher Rufo types at the ideological head have much clearer ideas than the middle of the pack, but I think folks who just post hate speech on Facebook or whatever also have an outline of the world they're trying to defend.
Of course you're right that the consistent overarching goal results in what we can point to as hypocrisy, e.g. states' rights to do what I want. But you know like, what good does that do us? When they say that CoD isn't political what they mean is it doesn't challenge the status quo. Challenging that hypocrisy doesn't make an impact on them because it's not what they're saying. The right will make similar attacks based on incorrect interpretation, e.g. "so much for the tolerant left", and they're never gonna change anybody's mind. Maybe we can agitate leftists by calling conservatives NPCs but is that gonna lead to increased working class consciousness? I think we have to identify and oppose their real intent (which liberals, without class analysis, can't do).
Their political positions are not based on any kind of analysis or fundamental principles, but instead shift along with the status quo, which does change over time due to things like technology, even if the overarching deference to the owning class never changes in a capitalist society.
side note - isn't this the same for us? working class is pretty different than it was in 1800s, subdivided and connected in different ways. It's true that in general the world shifts, but if the real goal of conservatives is to keep just the owning class in control then that stacks up pretty well against our goal of working-class control. Personally I think the biggest theoretical deficiency of the right is just that it isn't coherent beyond this basic point. Conservatives aren't telling each other to read theory (Friedman? there's no conservative Marx), 4chan and youtube is all they have. Ironically kinda postmodern
They also focused on calling their opponents "NPCs" as a way to completely dehumanise them, treat them like a mindless character in a video game that it is ok to torment and attack because their suffering isn't "real."
At its core, this is a meme about dehumanising people different from us, treating them as mindless and disposable and I don't think it's something we should encourage.
yeah. especially toxic to us since we're supposed to be fighting for the working class, not writing them off as drones. structurally the 1/3 or so of the working class that's been sucked into this has been bribed; as we start racking up working-class wins they'll start coming around.
Communists reject this: we have a coherent framework of looking at the world, our position on individual struggles (labor, racism, queer liberation, colonialism, whatever) is informed by that, and so we can have strong beliefs about many issues that are a reflection of our strong central beliefs.
Communism will always be 2 things 1) informed by a coherent framework and 2) cool. It's really neat because of that. You get a lot of dunks because the zeitgeist will necessarily always determined by a lot of people poking at the lowest common denominator and your understanding of theory gives you succinct explanations. I.e. someone talking about the risks a business owner takes and you responding how they risk ending up working alongside your dumbass. It's also always cool to be a misfit and care for other misfits. The Yemeni pirate kid who took over that shipping vessel is hard not to root for if you're not reveling in your direct benefit from the imperialist economy. A union is going to always have your heart more than shareholders will. You can try to point fingers at a teacher's union and claim that they're greedy, but how could you ever get a cultural purchase about teachers being overpaid? It's just not going to happen.
It's so neat that communists disdain to conceal their aims.
I think this is not true. NPC rhetoric originated with right-wingers; google "I support the current thing" for a distillation. Essentially their argument is that the left cares about a lot of things, and therefore it doesn't care about any of them, people are just conformists and not thinking for themselves, etc. Communists reject this: we have a coherent framework of looking at the world, our position on individual struggles (labor, racism, queer liberation, colonialism, whatever) is informed by that, and so we can have strong beliefs about many issues that are a reflection of our strong central beliefs. Apply the same logic to our enemies.
Conservatives who move, for instance, from hating gay people to hating trans people didn't have a chip swapped out in their heads. They want to maintain patriarchy and oppose any attempts to loosen the straightjacket. They may variously oppose "CRT", "DEI", "ESG"; "PC culture" or "wokeness"; all those oppositions are the same impulse to keep capitalism chugging away to benefit the guys at the top.
There are some funny exceptions in the form of post-hoc rationalization, like how the evangelical groups only began opposing abortion on religious grounds after they realized that legalizing it threatened to undermine patriarchy. But for the most part, any heavy consumer of right-wing social media, conservative activist, or politician has or is coalescing a fairly consistent worldview and we can't beat them if we incorrectly think they're morons.
I agree with almost all of this, but I don't think most of it contradicts OP's premise (so long as we remove the word "literal" from the title). Like:
Right. And each of them could be swapped out depending on whether or not they are convenient for capital to oppose or support at any given moment, with the issue of evangelicals and abortion that you pointed out being the perfect example of this in general, not an exception.
First of all, I would agree that their worldview can be called consistent in that it is comprised of positions that will always tend towards support for capital, the status quo, and existing hierarchical power structures. But that's a different thing from being inconsistent in terms of hypocrisy or what we might call "internal consistency," like not being totally contradictory. Example, claiming to stand for keeping politics out of games while holding up something like Call of Duty as being apolitical. Or referring to people who care about equality as being "special snowflakes" even as they themselves whinge and blubber about the oppression of whatever group they tie to their sense of identity (invariably the most privileged groups like white, cis-hetero, men, gamers, etc.) It's these kind of culture war issues that are the chips that can be swapped out that I think SFS was talking about and he is right.
Their political positions are not based on any kind of analysis or fundamental principles, but instead shift along with the status quo, which does change over time due to things like technology, even if the overarching deference to the owning class never changes in a capitalist society. These are politics of convenience in a way that communist politics are most definitely not. Maybe it's just semantics, but I would say right wing culture war politics are not arbitrary, but that they are inconistent.
Also, I don't think it's really accurate to lump the rank and file chuds (the larger mass of right wing social media) in with the politicians as a singular class with the same interests that align in support of capital. There are those that get the ball rolling and steer the culture war issues and those that unfortunately will just follow along and be outraged by whatever the fox news or youtube alt-right algorithm or evangelical church tells them is outrageous. Like has been pointed out before, many working class people who identify as right wing do correctly recognize there is something really fucking wrong with this shit society, but they are manipulated into looking in the exact opposite direction of where the problem actually lies. The capitalist class, in part via politicians, are the ones doing the manipulation after having murdered and demonized the left. I think it's fair to say that there are some people who hold and program the chips in OP's analogy, able to cynically swap them in and out to benefit their own ends, but a much larger set of people whose brains are the targets for those chips and who have been trained to accept the swapping without question.
I've noticed this too, and it's funny because the whole basis of the "NPC support current thing" meme is supposed to be that leftists only hold they opinions they do for social acceptance, while you can see examples of chuds adjusting their opinions depending on who they're talking to. The most common one I've seen is how opinions on climate change will range from "it's not real" when with other hogs, to "it might be real but it's not worth worrying about since this happened at other points in earth's history*, and do you really think humans are significant enough to be a factor?" when around non-political types, to "it's real and human activity is a factor but it's too late so why bother" when around people who have the scientific knowledge to understand and have strong opinions on it.
*this argument works on people who aren't knowledgeable or invested in the topic since it's technically true, but records show the magnitude of changes we've seen in the last century usually take place over thousands of years
re: rank and file - that's why I kind of hedged with "coalescing". There are a lot of self-identified leftists who don't read theory, but they've browsed enough Hexbear or instagram posts or whatever to have some reasonable socialist principles. If we let them off the hook, we have to do the same for heavy consumers of right-wing media. Wasn't doing class analysis really. Of course the Christopher Rufo types at the ideological head have much clearer ideas than the middle of the pack, but I think folks who just post hate speech on Facebook or whatever also have an outline of the world they're trying to defend.
Of course you're right that the consistent overarching goal results in what we can point to as hypocrisy, e.g. states' rights to do what I want. But you know like, what good does that do us? When they say that CoD isn't political what they mean is it doesn't challenge the status quo. Challenging that hypocrisy doesn't make an impact on them because it's not what they're saying. The right will make similar attacks based on incorrect interpretation, e.g. "so much for the tolerant left", and they're never gonna change anybody's mind. Maybe we can agitate leftists by calling conservatives NPCs but is that gonna lead to increased working class consciousness? I think we have to identify and oppose their real intent (which liberals, without class analysis, can't do).
side note - isn't this the same for us? working class is pretty different than it was in 1800s, subdivided and connected in different ways. It's true that in general the world shifts, but if the real goal of conservatives is to keep just the owning class in control then that stacks up pretty well against our goal of working-class control. Personally I think the biggest theoretical deficiency of the right is just that it isn't coherent beyond this basic point. Conservatives aren't telling each other to read theory (Friedman? there's no conservative Marx), 4chan and youtube is all they have. Ironically kinda postmodern
They also focused on calling their opponents "NPCs" as a way to completely dehumanise them, treat them like a mindless character in a video game that it is ok to torment and attack because their suffering isn't "real."
At its core, this is a meme about dehumanising people different from us, treating them as mindless and disposable and I don't think it's something we should encourage.
yeah. especially toxic to us since we're supposed to be fighting for the working class, not writing them off as drones. structurally the 1/3 or so of the working class that's been sucked into this has been bribed; as we start racking up working-class wins they'll start coming around.
And it's all meant to keep the left on the defensive and stoop to even entertain their arguments.
Communism will always be 2 things 1) informed by a coherent framework and 2) cool. It's really neat because of that. You get a lot of dunks because the zeitgeist will necessarily always determined by a lot of people poking at the lowest common denominator and your understanding of theory gives you succinct explanations. I.e. someone talking about the risks a business owner takes and you responding how they risk ending up working alongside your dumbass. It's also always cool to be a misfit and care for other misfits. The Yemeni pirate kid who took over that shipping vessel is hard not to root for if you're not reveling in your direct benefit from the imperialist economy. A union is going to always have your heart more than shareholders will. You can try to point fingers at a teacher's union and claim that they're greedy, but how could you ever get a cultural purchase about teachers being overpaid? It's just not going to happen.
It's so neat that communists disdain to conceal their aims.