Why can't the "Left" appeal to the Extreme Left in the way the "Right" courts the Extreme Right?

[Aiken_Drumn]

It is so depressing.. rather than balance out, it seems Conservatives can always always rabble up the more extreme right to vote... where is the Extreme Left? Why are they not a voting bloc to court? The result is the "Left" have to instead court the middle ground so we are always shifting the goalposts.

 

[Akka]

We must be living in different realities, because I feel it's only the extreme left that has an actual voice on the left side these days.

But a significant factor might be that the right has an ideological affinity with autority, and as such has less ground to cover to assemble people, while the left tend to be less accepting of authoritarianism, so moderate leftists might be more cautious supporting extremes.

 

[Senethro]

We must be living in different realities, because I feel it's only the extreme left that has an actual voice on the left side these days.

But a significant factor might be that the right has an ideological affinity with autority, and as such has less ground to cover to assemble people, while the left tend to be less accepting of authoritarianism, so moderate leftists might be more cautious supporting extremes.

Yeah, nah, you're using "extreme" as a poorly defined boogeyman thats supposedly doing bad things.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

We must be living in different realities, because I feel it's only the extreme left that has an actual voice on the left side these days.

But a significant factor might be that the right has an ideological affinity with autority, and as such has less ground to cover to assemble people, while the left tend to be less accepting of authoritarianism, so moderate leftists might be more cautious supporting extremes.

In which reality does the Left currently hold power?

Of those, who have an ear to the Extreme?

Certainly I can't think of any nation offhand, though there might be argued a few in South America. The USA is held very very weakly by the Left who on a global scale are pretty Right of Centre anyway.

Edit, you could argue China.. but again.. certainly they're not listening to "The Left" much!

 

[Gorbles]

The way I see it, as someone often characterised as being on the "extreme" left, is that we want things more moderate folk don't think is possible / simply doesn't want / etc / et al. Whereas the extreme right does a lot of the things right-leaning people think have understandable rationale, even if they (nominally) disagree with the method or type of action used.

A reverse phrasing of this would be we do things that moderates cannot accept (for whatever reason), whereas the far-right (and similar) does things the right is willing to accept.

This is of course discounting the whole liberal / centrist mid-section of the spectrum, where you'll commonly see people that describe themselves as liberal or progressive, except on [insert major progressive point here]. The reverse is possible (i.e. consider themselves conservative or right-leaning, but with support for specific progressive things), but it seems to be less common (anecdotally).

 

[E.man]

In which reality does the Left currently hold power?

Of those, who have an ear to the Extreme?

Certainly I can't think of any nation offhand, though there might be argued a few in South America. The USA is held very very weakly by the Left who on a global scale are pretty Right of Centre anyway.

Edit, you could argue China.. but again.. certainly they're not listening to "The Left" much!

Nations with 'Left' governments offhand?

Including Social Democracies we've got Scandinavian countries which are pretty much always left, e.g. Norway, Finland.
New Zealand has been since 2017 and Australia just moved with a new government.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Thinking about the political right and left in terms of an equally spaced spectrum is a flawed perspective to begin with. That outlook alone is a big part of the problem folks seem to be describing.

 

[Senethro]

I think we should place the political centre within the zone that doesn't want to delete the ice caps but thats just my opinion haha

 

[Sommerswerd]

That's "extreme" lols

 

[Arwon]

Because they hate and fear them

 

[Akka]

In which reality does the Left currently hold power?

That's not what the original point was about.

Yes, the left overall today is in a pretty bad shape, not holding a significant power at the head of government. Which is a pretty big problem, especially considering that most global troubles we're heading full speed ahead would require solutions that typically would come from the left.
But your initial post was about how the mainstream right can manage to gather from the far-right, while the left can't from the far-left. And my answer is that the voices from the left we hear are actually mostly the far-left, with the traditionnal/moderate left being the one mostly left out - and, IMO, the reason why we are still stalling in these aforementionned global main issues.

Certainly I can't think of any nation offhand, though there might be argued a few in South America. The USA is held very very weakly by the Left who on a global scale are pretty Right of Centre anyway.

Edit, you could argue China.. but again.. certainly they're not listening to "The Left" much!

I wouldn't put China anywhere to the left. It's fascist in every possible aspects save the name.

A reverse phrasing of this would be we do things that moderates cannot accept (for whatever reason), whereas the far-right (and similar) does things the right is willing to accept.

Well... pretty much :

But a significant factor might be that the right has an ideological affinity with autority, and as such has less ground to cover to assemble people, while the left tend to be less accepting of authoritarianism, so moderate leftists might be more cautious supporting extremes.

 

[Gorbles]

I wouldn't characterise it as authority, personally, but you and I know we hold different opinions there.

 

[Narz]

The extreme right is delusional, like people @ church channeling spirits, think clean coal, bringing back factories, etc. the idea of MAGA sums it up.

Extreme left is depressing & divisive, they're pretty impotent @ gathering troops and obsessed w rating people based on levels of oppression & with fringe causes rather than focusing on raising all boats (basically infighting & purity testing makes it hard to win).

The right also is better @ appealing to people's desire for fixes to short term actual problems : economic, inflation, fearfulness (of job security, foreign influences, crime, etc).

For many climate change is still abstract and hard to focus on when you're drowning in economic, social & emotional problems that feel more pressing.

Not that the left focuses much on environmental issues anyway.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

Nations with 'Left' governments offhand?

Including Social Democracies we've got Scandinavian countries which are pretty much always left, e.g. Norway, Finland.
New Zealand has been since 2017 and Australia just moved with a new government.

With 195 countries on the planet, thank you for making my point.

 

[Zardnaar]

There's not enough of them.

5-10% here depending on the election results.

Overseas I suspect it's similar. It's also generational lots of boomers not enough younger people.

 

[Zardnaar]

Nations with 'Left' governments offhand?

Including Social Democracies we've got Scandinavian countries which are pretty much always left, e.g. Norway, Finland.
New Zealand has been since 2017 and Australia just moved with a new government.

We've been batting 50/50 here since 1996.

We have a socially liberal government that ruled out tax hikes (to win the middle) so there hands are essentially tied with spending. Except they printed money for Covid bailouts that were top heavy.

Can't go hard right or left so we get centre left/right that generally tinkers at the margins.

 

[Narz]

Stupid stuff like this (see video below about politization of monkeybox) is why the left can't mobilize. They lack honesty and are worried about PR over getting stuff done, pretending to care over actually caring.

When you're so commited to lying to avoiding hurting people's feelings (really avoiding anyone getting upset with YOU) you make even a chronic liar like Trump seem appealing to some people. Stop lying and conspiracy theories about why you're lying will lose traction.

Spoiler :

 

[amadeus]

There was an old saying about American politics: “Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line.” Not 100% applicable here, but close enough I guess.

From my casual observation, the more left groups are likely to splinter and have more rigid adherence to their tenets.

 

[Gorbles]

This thread is going pretty predictably, I have to say.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Because the “Left” as you describe it is not actually Left. They’re liberals. On the one hand you have The Left (your “extreme left”) whose animus is the abolition of the present liberal order, and on the right you have fascism (your “extreme right”), whose function is to preserve liberalism in the face of a surging Left movement. “The right” seems more amenable to “the extreme right” because they are at a point where they feel fascist praxis is necessary to stop us. You’ll turn to them too if we ever get enough power. It happens every time.

Unless you’re talking about the Retvrn dweebs, but their movement is more marginal and online than even the cringy individualist primitivist anarchists