It's completely impossible to have any sort of meaningful conversation about anything that matters anymore because nobody will engage with the facts. Conservatives who've never put any thought into a topic in their life will say "well my initial assumption is obviously common sense" and the general public will treat this as an equally (if not more) valid argument than citing years of history and peer-reviewed research done by people who've dedicated their lives to understanding the world. There's no way for the left to convince anyone of anything if reality itself is shunned as political bias. It's so infuriating that it's pushing me towards a radically misanthropic mindset. How do we pull the masses out from this gaping abyss?
You bring back intellect and emphasize how emotion and appeals to empathy alone can’t build a better society.
Knowledge is socially formed. You've got to create social arrangements where knowledge can be collectively created.
>>2897586>You've got to create social arrangements where knowledge can be collectively created.Can you give a specific example? We already have schools and those don't seem to be cutting it.
>>2897595Yeah there are schools, but those schools are operating exactly as intended, and the result is the anti intellectualism that you describe. If you want to start fixing that, then we need to make our own proletarian schools run along proletarian lines, for proletarian needs.
>>2897608But how? Obviously the left can make things better if the left gets power, but the immediate problem is that everyone is too unwilling to engage with facts to accept that left wing ideas are worth giving power in the first place. We need a cure before we can start preventative medicine.
>>2897572I'm not sure but it's the most pressing issue of the present day. Across nearly all of the western world electoral behaviour has polarised by education, with the right winning the uneducated and the left winning the educated.
Intellectuals suck though, they’re horrible, smug people with the biggest egos around, that’s not to say it’s good to be an ignoramus but still
>>2897621The cure is the process. If you're not engaging with people to create alternatives to the systems producing things like anyi intellectualism then what exactly are you hoping to accomplish? If you're trying to clean up a river, you've got to start with the source of the pollution.
>>2897627Malice is always more sinful than smugness, it's precisely because the smug have done such a good job of constraining the evil that we forget just how much worse it gets.
>>2897638A malicious intellectual is way more harmful than a malicious dumb dumb
>>2897585>You bring back intellect and emphasize how emotion and appeals to empathy alone can’t build a better society.Empathy isn't the enemy of the left. Everything the left wants, whether it be workers rights or minorities rights, is ultimately rooted in empathy. If you simply believe that people don't deserve fairness then no amount of factual information is going to change that. Empathy and intellectualism need to work together if we're going to get anything done.
>>2897693Empathy doesn't lead to left wing positions. Right-wingers have plenty of empathy for the victims of immigrant criminals, women who lose athletic scholarships to trans competition, and Israeli victims of Hamas.
>>2897572>my initial assumption is obviously common senseThe neoliberal conception of freedom is being a baby brained consumer who makes their preferred choices in the free market of ideas.
>reality itself is shunned as political biasThat's the legacy of every "mature", "reasonable", "adult in the room" leftist austerity scold from Carter to Clinton to Obama and Biden/Kamala.
The reality is that the DSA left does nothing but victim blame the working class for responding dysfunctionally to their PMC anti-Stalinist anarcho-Bidenist ideology. Jacobin literally wrote an article crying about how an AI moratorium is "dangerous" and "conspiratorial" and "won't let us fight China". Very rational, ma'am!
>>2897622>the right winning the uneducatedJD Vance betraying his hillbilly family to gain social capital for the Jeffrey Epstein class is the dream of every American wannabe-kulak cannibal
People change their opinions not based on rationality but based on how they live their lives.
If their job doesnt require intellectualism then they have no requirement to believe its important. If their social circle all have similar jobs they will all similarly believe that intellectualism has no value.
You do not gain social prestige from intellectualism under individualistic suburban or apartment style living situations. It is only valuable when your social circle are themselves either take intellectualism seriously for its own merits or for instrumental reasons.
We need to create tangible physical benefits for people who dont live individualistically. For those that want to live thoughtfully.
My orgs provide events, food and services like tool libraries for our community. When people's daily routine bumps them up against people who they know will want to talk about politics, science, tech, history, art theory, agricultural science or whatever.l, then they will in their spare time read to catch up with their social circle. First they will to not look stupid, then they do because its fun to learn.
The issue here is that people first need to be deindividualised. They need to accept that some of their basic needs are gonna be supported by their community. We need to support and build that infrastructure.
When they do come to your local community, they need to bump into people and have time to gave positive conversations with others. Their social circle needs to contain intellectuals who are kind, cool and capable of teaching the joy of intellectualism in a very informal setting.
History is great for this because they are just stories at first but linking the stories together into the themes of history is where the real intellectual exercise comes.
Essentially, build community infrastructure to help proles with their basic needs. Engage them in conversation, invite them to dinner, become their friend, go to the pub with them, encourage them to start using community services.
Then have the baseline norm of conversation be atleast a bit intellectual and have ENGAGING, WELL THOUGHT OUT workshops and classes to teach people the basics they need to engage in intellectualism.
This works for us, it will work for you
Take a break and watch football. It's not that deep.
>>2897720Empathy without intellectualism leads to moral panic. Intellectualism without empathy leads to fascism. Any road not built on both foundations will lead to the same place. The left needs both to survive.
>>2897758Wrong. I have no empathy but I'm a communist simply because it's the most rational course of thinking + the universe is objectively material in nature.
>>2897764>Wrong. I have no empathy but I'm a communist simply because it's the most rational course of thinking + the universe is objectively material in nature.Capitalism is working exactly as intended. Those at the top of the hierarchy continue to flourish and grow. Why then do you prefer Communism? Could it be that you believe that hierarchy to be unjust? Can you not see how empathy is a piece of that worldview?
There's no way to justify making the world a better place without probing the meaning of "better". Who is it better for? People? Animals? Which ones? This question requires you to either accept or reject empathy. If you reject empathy, then why do you want things to be better for others?
>>2897772private appropriation of socially created surplus is a contradiction
Marxism anti intellectual
The revolution will genocide intellectuals
>>2897720Right wingers have empathy for the in group they percive themselfes belonging too. Its part of our cause to see themselves as what they truly are which is exploited workers not insane phantoms like race sex ect ect
>>2897775So? Lots of things are contradictions. Like orbits or growing trees.
Part of it is counterintuitive, but those who feel like OP have to be very careful about the delivery. A lot of anti-intellectualism comes because often intellectuals can be absolute douchebags about it and then you end up with people who, no matter how right you may be, will never admit it because your're an asshole.
People have to be receptive and then engaged. Think about how the absolute huge gains conservatives (social and economic) pick up because of the perception - and not without some evidence - of various forms of offputting lefties. This is also why the oligarchs have worked hard to conflate the most obnoxious social issue mouthpieces with leftist economic policy; its hard to get people to hate universal public healthcare from the taxes they already pay, but if they staple it to the dangerhair screaming stereotype that wants to eject from society anyone they disagree with and censor objectionable entertainment, its no longer about the argument itself its
>This thing belongs to / is associated with THOSE people. You don't want to support THEM do you?
which does the work for you. Overall, "anti-intellectualism" is a complicated issue but its going to require not just intellect but also the wisdom and empathy necessary to read the situation and devise the proper approach.
>>2897572>Conservatives who've never put any thought into a topicThey don't have to, because the bourgeois media and the conservative influencers shilled by the tech oligopoly's algorithm have already done the thinking for them. It's not like people base their views on nothing at all, they are bombarded with this propagandistic slop day after day, probably for as long as they can remember, after which it retroactively becomes "common sense".
I've had success with rightoids by just doing the exact same the right did to make them rightoids: appeal to fear and anti-intellectualism.
Instead of saying "uhm the bourgeoisie are le bad because (insert complex historical shit they wont understand)" say "these damn rich fucks fucking us in the ass though we do all the work and they dont do shit!!!", instead of explaining why capitalism is le bad just say "these rich fucks are weird and satanic not like us normal fuckin' people!!!"
It's all about aesthetics and vibes. If you look like a guy that would get dunked on in a "Ben Shapiro owning dumb liberals compilation" video then people will tune out. You need to try to look and SOUND like that one villain from a metal gear game that gets meme'd on and use simple wording (Instead of saying stuff like "extraordinary" just say "very very". Instead of "ontologically" say "real fuckin'").
Make people fear the bourgie ("They eat kids!!!") and also try appealing to their narcissism ("You're BETTER than those rich fucks, bet they cant even change a lightbulb"). Also use language that rightoids use to refer to poor people but with rich people, I mean stuff like saying Elon Musk is a bum ass moocher.
Appeal to macho aesthetics too, make fun of rightoid politicians for having soft hands that look like they've never worked on a car or done construction in their lives and that sort of shit.
>but the volk are smart and have their own collective wisdom an-
No. The people are dumb as fuck, get on their level and work from there.
The great problem with the American world is that the anti-anti-intellectuals are not intellectuals.
>>2897764> I have no empathyLiar.
>>2897936>the dangerhair screaming stereotype that wants to eject from society anyone they disagree with and censor objectionable entertainmentIt's so frustrating that this is a left wing stereotype when every right wing politician is publically advocating for these things 24/7. Meanwhile if you try to point to examples of "left wing" people doing this it's almost always just random teenagers online or liberals that don't even want the left wing to succeed.
Same thing applies to the "why is the left so violent" shit the media has been pushing for the last few years, not to mention the child grooming accusations. Everything is projection and people just fall for it like lemmings. Drives me insane.
Sadly the population is so unedcated you just have to beat it out of them
>>2898220Getting smacked doesn’t get anyone in a learning mood
it's not "anti-intellectualism" it's just a communication failure on the part of the so-called "intellectuals" who are too elitist and closed-minded to want to speak any language other than their own and their elitism has alienated them from common society. to communicate with people you have to know your audience and be able to speak to them as equals in a language they understand and to be able to do that you actually have to have intuitive knowledge of what you are talking about rather than just memorizing a bunch of names and quotes and vocabulary.
>>2897572>because nobody will engage with factsIf you're a normal person, just immediately disengage from such morons. If you're an expert in a particular field, you're already doing all that can be done, i.e. your life's work, which is usually disseminated via propaganda by third party institutions. Just, I think those institutions should make better propaganda, and realize that you can't convince people who don't want to be convinced.
If I had it my way, I'd punish sensationalism with violence. Ben Shapiro et. all would be publicly executed for the sins of demagoguery, sophistry, and denial of reality, so as to create a precedent. You can have your post-truth reality, but not without consequence. GOOD FAITH ARGUMENTATION OR DEATH. This is why I could never mourn Mr. Kirk; if it was orchestrated by the right-wing themselves as an attempt at creating a martyr who could galvanize their base, then they failed, because all I saw was a court jester being slain for being too tongue-in-cheek.
I know, perhaps I'm the edgiest of lords, but it is what it is.
>>2898011>The great problem with the American world is that the anti-anti-intellectuals are not intellectuals.Sobering truke. Damn.
>>2897572Nobody ever engaged with the fact, it always was sane scepticism vs naked propaganda, regardless of (fake) left-right wing spectrum
Honestly I think a big problem is people are unable to "detach" themselves and step back from their pre-held beliefs, and then analyze information in a holistic structural fashion (both common sense, the data, dialectically address the arguments provided), and then come back with a conclusion. You also have to accept that your conclusion, may be wrong, then again, rinse repeat.
People often get angry at me IRL for being "pedantic" irl and even on here. "Oh that's an isolated case", "oh that's only 5%" when I provide counterfactuals, but the reality is, the existence of those counterfactuals means it isn't black and white, and there are other factors that must come into the analysis as to why those counterfactuals exist. Often, it's the study of the counterfactual, where you find the solution.
Another big one is, and this is a major one even here on Leftypol, is just pure partisanship. If the right wing believe something, it has to be 100% wrong, even when it turns out the right was correct all along on a topic, actually, now we have to pivot and try make the right out like they are still wrong and the thing doesn't actually show the thing!
I've often said that the right are actually correct on many issues, but they come to the correct conclusion, based on the wrong, usually reactionary processes. This so often pulls the left into such retarded lumpen ass antisocial positions, like defending grooming gangs, open borders, pro-Crime, justifying lumpen cultures, treating minorities like they can do no wrong while everything white people do is wrong etc.
You see it with the Ukraine War as well. Russia bad so Ukrainian Nazis cannot exist, Ukraine being ethno-Nationalists cannot exist, NATO expansion can't be a dangerous and bad thing despite it was pretty much IR consensus that NATO expansion was a terrible idea, the USSR was evil because it defeated the "hunt and kill all the Jews and minorities" UPR. You can be critical of Russia, and it's invasion, and still accept Ukraine is a kleptocratic Fascistic LARP state. But nope, it's one or the other.
I think one of the most phenomenal things about Marxism, that is ironically, abandoned by most of the left, and often Marxists (and the mods of this site) themselves, is the holistic nature of Dialectical reasoning.
>>2899485>This so often pulls the left into such retarded lumpen ass antisocial positions, like defending grooming gangs, open borders, pro-Crime, justifying lumpen cultures, treating minorities like they can do no wrong while everything white people do is wrong etc. What is this /pol/tard larp? Half these things are far-right strawmen and the other half I can't even figure out what you're trying to say.
>You see it with the Ukraine War as well. Russia bad so Ukrainian Nazis cannot existLiterally nobody says this. Why would anyone even bring it up? The moral purity of the average Ukrainian is irrelevant to the discussion of whether or not Russia invading them is bad.
I honestly think we should just abandon ship tbh, those who will follow will follow, the others can fuck off
>>2900211This specific form of Sinophobia can be traced directly to the John Birch Society. They were extreme anti-communist American nationalists who were convinced that Truman, Eisenhower, and even Nixon were socialists or communists. This wasn't some fringe cult, they had a wide network of powerful and influential people, including billionaires, multimillionaires, congressmen and academics.
The fact that they were essentially a secret cabal of powerful people trying to manipulate American democracy while simultaneously believing they were the underdogs is pretty fucking funny. But they had a real political impact. They helped push the Republican Party against Nixon, whom they absolutely fucking hated and they laid some of the groundwork for Reagan's rise to power. Even then, they ended up disappointed with Reagan because he didn't pursue their ultimate goal. the removal of "Red China."
That's where the name comes from. John Birch, an American intelligence officer who worked with Chinese Nationalist forces and was killed in an ambush by the PLA. The John Birch Society viewed him as the first American casualty of what they considered to be WW3. Ever since, they have remained obsessed with confronting and ultimately destroying communist China. The organization still exists today and has maintained connections with the broader American conservative movement, including association with the Trump administration, while continuing to advocate a hard-line position toward China and oppose any US/China relations.
>>2898234Why can’t the masses do an effort like we do? I assume most of us come from a humble background, yet we pushed through. Tbh watching Chomsky videos on YouTube was my stepping stone
You’re right about how dumb the right is, but let’s not act like this hasn’t also become a problem in centrist and left-wing spaces too. such as this board
>>2897999>these damn rich fucks fucking us in the ass though we do all the work and they dont do shit!!!">"these rich fucks are weird and satanic not like us normal fuckin' people!!!"the whole point of conspiracy theories about specific sects of the bourgeoisie is to deflect and defuse exactly this. It's not "the rich" it quickly becomes "Yeah, we need more people like (x based billionaire) and not like (the jews/george soros/globalists/democrats)" at which point you have to explain why it's all billionaires are bad, which is by design supposed to make you sound intolerant/extremist/misguided
>>2900328>>2897999I want healthcare but not for gay people or immigrants is the true median position
Infographics, explainers, good plans with proof that you don't have to convert your identity or beliefs for etc.
>>2897572Average person a hundred years ago was an illiterate peasant who beat their wife. This idea that anti-intellectualism is far greater in modernity is just a complete myth.
>>2906067>Average person a hundred years ago was an illiterate peasant who beat their wife. This idea that anti-intellectualism is far greater in modernity is just a complete myth.They were both equally guilty. Let's not misrepresent here. Poverty is mean business.
>>2906127Being nice and polite is a luxury
>>2906067They were uneducated yes but they gave some credit to thoses who had higher education.
>>2898006Crazy how Mao forgot what he wrote. Smh.
>>2906067The average political engaged citizen was much more knowledgeable and well read than 90% of political followers today. If you don't believe me, try reading newspaper articles and editorials from 100-150 years ago.
>>2899344They could give you plenty of reasons, at least they did in the past when they bothered: that picking winners and losers distorts the markets, that unions make businesses uncompetitive and fail, that socialist economies stagnate and collapse, that leftist policies do the opposite of what they claim, and maybe they were well meaning but naive in the past, but with historical experience anyone repeating it now must be malicious. Any leftist policy that sounds good is just baiting the mousetrap with cheese.
The left has quite the hole to dig itself out of.
>>2898250>oddly enough anti-European sentiments (because they view Europeans as liberal commies)Naturally. This is why I laugh when socdems cite European welfare states for their arguments. The average MAGA could swat this away in his sleep: America didn't become the best country in the world by emulating Europoors. They're bureaucratic nightmares where businesses struggle and people work 19 hours a day to give welfare to ungrateful moochers who burn down cars, and Euros can only do that because America GRACIOUSLY defends them, etc. etc.
>>2907186Oops, I meant 19 hours a week. They'd also say the entire point of the American Revolution was to reject Euro stupidity. All the brave, red-blooded adventurers left for the new world, Europe is a husk.
>>2907186The funny thing is the origin of this sentiment can be traced back to the American left in the 1970s. This whole idea that Europe is backward and rigid compared to the dynamic young America was essentially the “woke” idea of the 1960s and 70s, contrasted with the then conservative view of America as part of European civilization. It just shows how much of a cultural victory the left has had.
>>2907184>The left has quite the hole to dig itself out of.The left yells "shut it down" and delete thread at conversations so there's no point in engaging. Also
>>2908927 , that clip was one of the worst things I have ever seen in my life. If that's your academia then Italian brainrot is better than that shit.
>>2897627better to be smug than a retard
>>2907184>>2909108Not really, the right doesn't actually care about debate, only to make it seem like their retarded ideas are just the same as any academic idea.
t. vid related
>>2900218>John Birch SocietyThe guy who taught me how to shoot guns was a former member of that organization. I emphasize former.
The obsession with China and how it's bound up in Christian proselytizing and apocalypticism in Evangelical culture is a very weird and wild thing. Nobody really goes into it. Like it's too alien for people in academia who are leftists in some kind of way to take seriously. But China is very large and has been historically resistant to Christianization, but proselytization has produced various cults which are outlawed by the government (video is one example). And these people in the United States feel that China got out of their grasp, and as a result it's also doomed in some kind of way to have an apocalyptic event occur for rejecting Jesus and America.
This gets secularized in the 21st century as well but basically the Three Gorges Dam is going to collapse because China refused to get Charlie Kirkified. That's how these people basically think.
>>2909144>>2909149>the right doesn't care about debate<here's why the left should stop debatingRight…
>>2909153Now that Christianity is entirely a LARP divorced from civil life, that doesn't sound particularly concerning (unless you extrapolate the current rates to the future population)
>>2909163>LARPChristians are being persecuted in China
Westerners are less authentic Christians than in the East
>>2909153I mean that 71 million is basically like 5 percent of China's Whole population. that really isn't much.
>>2909166>persecutedWhat happens to them ? They don't receive church tax exemptions or something ?
>>2909171No they don't and again, that growth would still would be only 7 percent of China's population, you're getting excited over what would be a micro population in the entirety of China. Stop thinking that your belief in a ancient Canaanite war and storm god is anything special.
TL;DR Stop being spooked, your god and faith is only a tool of billionaires to control you, American Evangelicalism is literally a CIA psyop.
>>2909177>only 1 in 14 people in China would be ChristianYeah, that's kind of a massive deal.
>faithI'm not a Christian. I'm just reporting on the facts.
Try to not get so hysterical, Mr. Egoist.
>>2909180>>2909179Oh Yes, facts that just so happen to line up with what American preachers connected to things like the John Birch Society would say to make their religion look better.
Not to mention you use such sites as "Amnesty International" and "Christian Relief". Yeah those totally wouldn't have a conflict of interest to keep getting money from the CIA and billionaires.
>>2909182Anon, it's clear that you are in denial and are conflicted.
You say one second that it's no big deal, and then revert by saying that it's not even real. Why not just accept that Chinese people fall for the mind virus like everybody else?
>>2909171>amnestyLol
>noooooo you have to register or else you're technically illegal, litterally 1984,also only leaders get persecuted. Wow, so cruel, much sad :(
>>2909168>I mean that 71 million is basically like 5 percent of China's Whole population. that really isn't much.It's possible the number might be a bit higher because it's not advertised, but the country probably still has one of the highest rates of atheism in the world.
The thing is that the Chinese government has suppressed religion to varying degrees throughout history. People think Marx, communism, atheism, blah blah blah. That influence is definitely important but it has deeper roots than that in Chinese history. It's about the relationship of religion to the state. That predates the Communist Party. There have been multiple waves of temple destruction that occurred at different times over the centuries. There have also been massacres of Christians. There was one example that attracted a lot of foreign attention during the Boxer Rebellion.
>>2909169>What happens to them ? They don't receive church tax exemptions or something ?Christians are commanded to proselytize and that's illegal. Eh, I'm not sure what can happen, but if you watch these cult videos, they will sometimes have images of members of their cult being tortured by the police. Now you can say they are a cult (they are) and are just saying that, but I think that kind of thing probably does indeed happen to some extent.
>>2909226>Jeb completely misunderstanding the joke because he has no sense of humoryou know what that's the most believable part of the entire story so I'll pretend the rest is true as well
>>2909195>but the country probably still has one of the highest rates of atheism in the worldSupposedly
>>2907186>>2909105Many sections of the American right and left have a negative bias toward Europeans.
On the right, this often means portraying Americans as rugged individualists, pioneers and cowboys compared with supposedly soft and safe Europeans. This conveniently ignores the enormous scale of warfare and violence taking place in Europe at the same time. More men likely died in a single 19th-century European battle than in all the violence associated with the Wild West.
On the left, it tends to mean praising America for its openness, diversity, liberalism and role in defeating fascism. On the far left, it’s more about seeing America as merely slightly better and freer than Europe.
Both versions are objectively wrong, but I they ultimately serve the same purpose, allowing Americans to self-mythologize a story about why America is uniquely different and superior to Europe.
>they are anti-intellectual
Oh, so they'll vote for the next retard and unknowingly spread more far-left propaganda for us by not getting the point?
>>2897720No they don't, theyll be dunking on women one moment, then displaying false empathy as an excuse to dunk on a group they hate and would like to exterminate
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