Honestly this could be extended to just why are people online so obsessed with pedophilia, cause Q nerds are obsessed with that shit also. But I've worked with my local Food not Bombs chapter, I've worked with my local DSA chapter, I've worked with my local SRA chapter, I've never heard pedophilia come up doing any of those things. But then I get online and its pedo this Epstein that. I get Q nerds being obsessed with this shit cause they have no material analysis, so they have to create some Satan worshipping pedophile cult to criticize the ruling classes. But why is the online left so obsessed with this stuff?
I'm not against talking about this stuff, it just seems like it often tends towards lib conspiracy brain with no material analysis. Honestly, its one of the few connective tissues I still see between this place and places like redscarepod, stupidpol, some of the old fellow travelers of the chapo sub. My friend sends me these horrible twitter accounts that I can only imagine are what Red Scare listeners are like - ostensibly left, but really just reactionary garbage - and its ALL pedo shit.
Is it the effect of being terminally online and a lot of the online left being radicalized at the same time as the whole pizzagate thing? Because I feel like before 2016 the only people who would regularly talk about pedophilia were libertarians, and mostly just to try and say that they're not actually pedophiles.
Is it the influence of TrueAnon? I feel like this stuff rarely leaves the online sphere. I've never had an actual conversation about pedophilia in irl left spaces. whywhywhywhywhy is everyone so obsessed with pedophilia online?
Materially, there was a billionaire with a shady background who was procuring and abusing children along with other billionaires. Not sure what's non-material about that. It happened. The AG who was to prosecute him publicly said he belonged to Intelligence. Material analysis doesn't mean you can't talk about how rich people conspire to do bad shit. The reason why conspiracies as a whole are often reactionary is that they draw focus away from the material, but that's not happening when you talk about Epstein in a material context.
You gain some insight into the political economy and how power exists by trying to see how these conspiracies work. There's always a point you reach where you can't know for sure because evidence is obfuscated or just doesn't exist. At some point it does become just picking the story that satisfies you the most, but that still isn't necessarily reactionary. You can't know everything about anything, at epistemologically, there's always a dead-end somewhere. The point is to train yourself to be able to make reasonable leaps, but not to get carried away.
There's also something to say about the liberal formulation of epistemology and ontology and all that. Just like everything else, that stuff exists in relation to capital and that means it tends to carry some capitalist bias. This is why the Soviets had an alternate science. It's not that the idea of an electron is inherently capitalist, but what is considered valid or invalid does work out in favor of the status quo. This body of knowledge has been developed under capitalism and we take it for granted that it exists outside of it somehow, that it's truly indifferent and objective, but it's not.
That's a rambling way to say that our ideas of evidence and proof are just as influenced by capitalism as our ideas of race or human nature or whatever else we leftist readily recognize as biased. You have to step outside of those standards of proof sometimes because they just end up reinforcing the hegemony most of the time. You can see how precious liberal intellectualism is to them when there is inescapable evidence of wrongdoing, they just excuse it or ignore it anyways. It's all about evidence until there's primary documents and irrefutable proof, then it's a hard retreat into idealism.
Other than that, we're against the status quo. So is the populist right. We're going to agree on some things for completely different reasons. The right was all about calling people pedos as a cudgel, and likely a conspiracy in itself, since some of the strongest early-pushers had ties to Epstein. They were half-right for the wrong reasons. And they were never going to blame their own people like Trump. But just because a right winger agrees with you on something, it doesn't mean you're wrong. Truth isn't determined by who agrees with it. It's just that becomes an uncomfortable social thing because you find yourself kind-of on board with people you despise and think are evil and that makes you feel bad. If you over-correct though and act like Epstein was way overplayed, it was just one guy, it doesn't have any broader implications about how politics works in the US, then I think you're wrong. But you feel better because you get to argue against the right about it.
My question wasn't really why are we agreeing with the populist right. I suppose my thinking was more like, we don't need these conspiracy theories to indict the capitalist class. We already have an ideological framework that so completely criticizes them that even if in their personal lives they were saints, we'd still have reason to oppose them, and then on top of that we have conspiracy theories which have been proven and we can point to documents or literally these people admitting this shit that prove us right. And so obviously when something as big as the whole Epstein thing happens we need to talk about it, we should talk about, and we should add it to our indictment of the capitalist class. And you're definitely right we shouldn't shy away from conspiracies that don't have overwhelming proof or those that Q heads happen to be into also. But it just seems too often (and granted, not on this site at all) that the whole pedophilia thing becomes the reason the capitalist class must be opposed. When like, it's not at all, it's only icing on the cake and just further reason to completely oppose the capitalist class, as if there weren't enough reasons already.
So in some online communities it just feels like it become a stumbling block, where it's like yes we must talk about pedophilia, but a Marxist critique of capitalism exists whether the capitalists are all engaging in pederasty or not. Or at least discuss how capitalism rewards the type of personality that would engage in pederasty. The base affecting the superstructure, or something, I don't know theory.
Why do we talk about Imperialist wars when we already have the inefficiency of Capitalism to point to? Because humans are moral creatures who base their actions on narratives.
Powerful people in every single Western democracy fuck kids and funnel kids to be fucked to their friends. It's an insanely fucked up thing and it motivates people to end the system that allows it.
Imperialism is integral to capitalism and must be discussed when talking about capitalism, and talking about imperialist wars doesn't overshadow the critique of capitalism. When it does, when people's whole ideology is anti-imperialism with very little beyond it, they are criticized for it.
Also, it doesn't motivate anyone to end any system, that's why the whole thing can be embraced equally by both the left and the right. Q heads can perfectly square a belief that the ruling class are pedophiles with capitalism and religious fundamentalism. Everyone from neo-nazis to communists can embrace it, it has no essential anti-capitalist characteristics. No ones gonna try to end any system just because they say the ruling class are all pedophiles.
Ok, that's why you combine it with class analysis, just as with imperialist wars. Anyone can oppose wars, what matters is your analysis.
yeah thats sorta the point I was trying to make. idk if it got muddled and just became "I hate talking about pedophilia," but yeah thats what I was trying to say
I think it's been years since I've had a real world relationship with someone (left or right) that didn't assume every fabulously rich person was a pedophile. Maybe my peers are more insane than yours.
I slum it with chuds, hogs, libs, working apoliticals, PMC types, and all of them to some degree believe we're ruled by pedos. Of course each of them think their guy is spotless and it's the other side that does satanic child sacrifices.
That said I think part of it is a mix of being a collective cultural joke and being a serious belief, with the scale of from humor to ideology is a sliding scale corresponding to how politically plugged in you are into American politics without having an extensive understanding of historical materialism
hey hey hey, im not the one sitting online all day posting about pedophilia
In real life it's kind of impolite to talk about pedophiles, no? But ever so often there's gossiping irl too
I brought up the Prince Andrew - Epstein interview while talking to a guy I'd just met, so I may be Terminally Online, lol. In fairness it was in the context of other "fuck the monarchy" chat.
My friend sends me these horrible twitter accounts that I can only imagine are what Red Scare listeners are like - ostensibly left, but really just reactionary garbage - and its ALL pedo shit.
Stop paying attention to the :stupidpol: type dumbasses.
They're cowards, too, so they probably tend to shut up on the rare occasion they do touch grass.
Because the online left doesn't really use materialist analysis either
Pedophilia is yet another crime the ruling class commits against us every single day.
Its because of Jeffrey Epstein, and brain contamination from contact with Q anon people.
I think that being terminally online will inevitably bring you into contact with libertarians and lolicons (who are often but not always the same thing), and so everyone develops an opinion on it even though it really is just a uniquely online phenomena of people being really uninhibited about something that they would be much more discrete about face to face. Bringing this stuff up IRL, even to say you don't like it, is most likely going to be super uncomfortable for everyone involved so people don't do it.
Honestly this could be extended to just why are people online so obsessed with pedophilia
Or just people
people aren't though, thats my point. i can count on one hand the amount of irl conversations ive had about pedophilia in my entire life. Unless everyone just waits until they're online to talk about it.
because it's acceptable for everyone to hate pedophiles
To be fair some forms of casual pedophilia and pedophilia aligned issues occur even in mainstream offlinehood. Certainly no lack of creepy men staring at teenagers at the beach or a pool, or 30 year old teachers dating high schoolers being normalized in teen dramas
yeah this stuff seems a bit more relevant. Feel like the casual pedophilia doesn't get mentioned when talking about the larger pedophilia conspiracies, but I definitely look back on my high school years and think, yeah a couple of those teachers were definitely pedophiles
