Anybody who thinks the group in this photo are "mutants" has never been outside. Go to a mall pretty much anywhere in the United States and you'll find a facsimile of each person within a ten minute period of people watching. What do they think "normal people" look like, a propoganda piece/ad from the 1950's?
That's what I said to them - they said they don't need 'hulking miner blokes' (as I called them), but just 'normal people'. What disqualifies most of these people from being 'normal', I'm not sure of.
It's literally probably just that 2 of them have dyed hair. They don't even see anyone else in the pic.
It's been memed on so hard in right wing circles that some segment of people exposed to it just completely turn off their brains. They're just like "that's the barista from my political compass meme (also baristas aren't workers, they're elitists)".
This typically comes from people who aren't being socialized and need playdates, because if they stepped outside for a bit, they'd notice colored hair is just really common and lots of types of people do it.
What is wrong with these people? Two people have dyed here. One woman has visible tattoos. One of the dyed hair woman has a Slayer t-shirt on. They have masks on. That's it and that's all normal outside the masks I guess. They're not even weird by turbo-normie standards.
Yeah all I see here is a group of young people. I guess if you were a crotchety old boomer you wouldn't want them to come up to you but outside of that it's no different than anyone you'd see grocery shopping.
Literally the most average looking group of people ever.
Anyone who sees this pic and thinks "mutants" has obviously never been outside for like the past 30 years.
I mean Im not a huge indoor hat fan but that hardly seems to qualify for such an attack.
You have rules about where you're allowed to wear a hat? What is this 1910?
I, and many other people, don’t like hats and sunglasses inside. I’m not really a fan of it
Because it comes off as though they care so little about being there they are still wearing clothes for being outdoors and will soon be departing anyway which isn’t what you want
And here I was thinking I was the oldest person on hexbear.
Aren’t you minding the business of me by acting as though I haven’t a right to disapprove of something?
you're free to privately think whatever you want, no one forced you to announce your judgements publicly
As much as I denigrate the freak. I also love the freak. I'm pro-freak. These are not freaks. Show me some actual freaks and we'll talk.
They're not wearing hardhats and overalls. They need to have dirt smudges on their faces (from digging coal) if i'm expected to take them seriously as salt-of-the-earth working class people (because that's what the pictures look like in my history book)
Wild to me how Trump, of all people, is the salt of the earth guy, when he's literally a coastal elite gossip queen who's the embodiment of born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
I literally walk by all these people on a daily basis, there's nothing abnormal about any of their appearances.
I do actually think a huge part of the movement being portrayed as crybabies is the fact that leftism has been co-opted by rich liberal arts kids
No, the perception I would say obviously comes from those who have the ability to disseminate information the most, the bourgeois class and their propagandists. Simply be the change you wanna see in the world by being a working class communist, ezpz, it's what the rest of us are doing.
This video on the Alt-Right playbook might help deprogram some of your brainworms relating to identity and socialism
True, yeah. I guess my perspective is shifted by my circles. Higher education in the arts is rife with it.
People who look normal compared to me being referred to as mutants
Yeah. I thought they were chill but it turns out they're borderline magacommunist. I can't believe that shit even exists. I thought I'd never encounter it irl.
It's hard to disagree with the fact that America's reactionary nature means that certain characteristics of race, gender, and sexuality, definitely do mean that a Leftist is less likely to be well received.
True and also so what? I wouldn't consider myself an expert on this stuff but I'd imagine you'd go further in building socialism by dismantling these ideas rather than trying to find ways to conform to them, because the categories are constructed to exclude the other. We could all dress like Mormons on a mission to knock on doors, but the reactionary response will be to find a new way to construct "mutants" or to invent some propaganda about how we're all lizards in disguise. Racism and bias serve a purpose under capitalism (going all the way back to the aftermath of Bacon's rebellion) and that makes them impediments to socialism. Ending them is more likely to be a precondition than a beneficial side-effect.
Good take. I can't overstate how useful it is coming into this chamber to be deprogrammed sometimes.
I agree, and I also think that maybe people care less about appearances and more about whether or not someone can help their immediate situation. This is why I think a lot of DSA activities like food drives, brake light repair, tenant organizing, etc. are on point and absolutely the way to go.
Just asked the mods and they said they'll auto-translate it to histerical now on the website.
Ha, true. I did actually consider that at the time but then must've got distracted by my train of thought. Apologies.
We'd be better off without people who call people "mutants" trying to represent the movement.
Imagine if someone knocked on the door of an average American and started ranting about how people with dyed hair are destroying society and the only thing preventing them from establishing communism. It'd be about as well-received as, well, as patsocs are. They're a useless, impotent, self-parody. They're the last people we should be listening to when it comes to aesthetics and appeal because they fail miserably at both.
It’s already been said several times, but it bears repeating: this is a completely normal-looking group of people in an extremely normal-looking photo. They’re wearing masks, which isn’t necessarily the norm, but anyone who isn’t an insane person shouldn’t find that weird.
More to the point, though, someone looking at this photo and calling these people “mutants” is very obviously responding to the context of the photo and not the photo itself. This photo could have been taken at a trade show, academic conference, gaming convention, competition, etc. The only thing to respond to here is that it was posted by the DSA. That’s it. Whoever called this a group of mutants is projecting their biases onto the photo based on their bias against the DSA, or leftists in general, and doesn’t need to be taken seriously.
I think they accidentally raise an interesting question of current left wing optics, and how the public receives them
OP this is not directed at you at all, since I know you are setting up an argument that someone you disagree with made. But there’s something implicit in this line of thinking that really grinds my gears and something that the western left needs to purge from our brains real damn quick.
I’m gonna just talk about the masks part, the other aspects like hair or tats other users have already covered.
The implicit argument here is that “normal” people are now anti-mask and think anyone wearing a mask is “weird”. And if you go by who is given a platform in our society - namely, middle class and up white folks - sure, you might be right. But if you talk with working class folks in our society who face the most oppression - BIPOC folks, people with health issues, LGBTQ folks, low wage white workers who aren’t total chuds - I mean I’m not saying they’re all masking up. But at least those groups of people in my experience in August 2023 do no see masking as “weird”. And just importantly, the groups of people I mentioned are the same people we should be organizing for and with. I honestly do not give a single fuck what some white dude financial analyst or ink toner distribution manager thinks of some DSA people masking up. They’re not the ones who we are going to convince, not at this moment and maybe not ever.
This is a societal problem. It actually kinda mirrors commodity fetishism, IMO. We all have no idea how large or small certain social groups are. White, college educated well off folks are waaay over represented to the point that we all think they make up a larger percent of the population than they are. And poor folks, we (we as a society I mean) tend to think they are a much smaller group than they are. But I was just reading a 2019 study today. Workers making less than $16/hr who were the sole breadwinners or shared a home with only other workers making that much or less made up about 25% of the workforce. For perspective, white evangelicals - a group that wields massive power and influence in the US - are about that same size. And that study totally excludes undocumented workers, the unhoused, and employed which are about 10% of the workforce IIRC. And $16/hr in 2019 dollars is pretty low threshold. I think it’s better to look at how many households only have like $500 or $1,000 saved up, and it’s usually like a majority of Americans or close to it.
Those are the people we should be agitating. They’re the actual silent majority and by and large, I don’t think they would consider these people “weird” (old people might, but old people think young people look weird no matter what). I do think there’s revolutionary potential here. It’s a huge number of people and they either look like these DSA comrades or don’t think there’s anything really weird about them.
They look like normal people to me. Is the pink hair or the purple highlights? I've seen conservatives with that hair.
It's 2023. They just look like people.
When I saw the title I thought it was gonna be people in Ninja Turtle costumes, but idk wtf is "mutant" about this. If I heard anyone use that term unironically like this, I'd assume they were some kind of Nazi.
Yea, truly wild word choice. If you're not talking about X-Men or the Toxic Avenger, that word is troublingly inaccurate at best and fascist shit at most likely.
