When I was a preteen on /pol/ there was a serious fetish for showing affection to your fellow posters, calling each other 'brother' and other cheesy shit. I thought when I was a stupid little fuck that these people really cared for me and wanted to know what I had to say, then I became a leftist and I never felt that again. I've never been part of any leftist community or project where I felt like people gave enough of a shit about me to forgive even a minor transgression. I feel similarly cold about these people who I am around. Its like in a heist movie where all the characters are brought together for a common goal and once they accomplish it they promise to never speak again. Anyone else feel this?
This is why I've always avoided scenes, and people for the most part. A dry and deeply ironic sense of humour combined with not being super open about my sexuality left me feeling isolated. Only really had one good friend and felt like a pretender elsewhere because I feared being ejected from any group I became a part of as I'd seen it happen from the sidelines too many times.
Everyone will have slips here and there the problem isn't that people are so worried about getting called out that they won't talk imo the problem is that the only thing compelling people to talk or not to talk is the possibility of a slip up because there's no banter or interesting conversation to risk it for
The goal of liberals is to restrict the sphere of acceptability to only that which suits the liberal’s own personal and class agenda. Liberals know nothing of solidarity; even among the social groups they claim to defend, the liberal won’t tolerate dissent from their own self-interested prescriptions. This is how you get things like that white lady on TV telling Nina Turner that she “has no authority” to talk about MLK, who apparently liked white moderates, actually.
The truth is this: nobody’s perfect. There is necessarily space for reconciliation and forgiveness within leftism- not for imperialism and reaction, but for true, honest misunderstanding. The important thing is to try your hardest, and when you make a mistake, to own it and use it as an opportunity for self-improvement. If you stick by that, you’re good in our books.
Nah, I feel pretty safe here and you should too comrade. This is the first community I ever felt safe enough to post in instead of just lurking. You're all amazing and I love you.
seems like it could be a combination of paranoia and a lack of leaders to coalesce around
This is a place where a lot of us express very critical view of the world, in both senses of the word. I think that's helpful for trying to understand this shit hellscape but it doesn't always make for the best community building and solidarity. I find that a lot easier offline, and have been lucky enough to continue through the pandemic because I live with other lefties.
In spaces like this I always liked the megathreads, because people would genuinely connect with each other a bit better; talking about gardening, sharing movies and essays, reaching out for support, etc. I think we could be a bit more intentional to talk directly to each other more. It's important to be a space that isn't just for a mutual interest and talking at each other about it, but one where we actually take in interest in each other as well as the shit we're talking about.
In light of that, I hope your day is going well OP <3
Idk your pronouns but you can be my sib any day! Love and respect for any comrade, I'd try to dearrest any of yall with my 5'8" waifish physique
I'm really sorry to hear that that's been your experience, but I can at least personally attest that that's not universally true on the left. I was involved with tenant organizing in my town, and we started our meetings by checking in on everybody and developed a real sense of mutual trust and support. I think if you can't practice solidarity in your organizing, you're never going to reach a mass base; it's really that important.
I got off really, really lucky and made some excellent friends on 4chan/8ch that ended up leftists like me, too. I don't know what I'd do or how socially lost I'd be without them. I tried joining the discord server for r/GenZommunist before ChapoChat launched hoping it'd be smaller and easier to integrate into than the CTH discord, get to know some leftists in my age group with similar situations, but it didn't really work out. Saw a few disagreements that didn't turn out very constructive and it left me feeling a little more depressed and unheard.
This place though, I'm really liking it so far. It's such a breath of fresh air seeing how the conversations in these comment chains progress amicably, as opposed to reddit where it's all about sticking it to someone or getting a lot of upvotes off a shitty, played out joke.
I'm a white guy with white guy friends so my friends are guys who are either politically indifferent or pretty reactionary
