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by flamble 1986 days ago
Yes, the "left" represented by the Democratic party /s.

Every single thing you've listed is controlled by capital, not by the left. Tech, Hollywood/Media, Social Media, News, and payment processing. Academia is a very partial exception (google "Koch brothers university funding").

Do you think that any of the organizations that constitute these groups are run by social activists? These are overwhelmingly multinational corporations. They care about nothing but profit and the preservation of the status quo. They will appropriate rhetoric about identity politics insofar as it is a good marketing strategy, but they never make a move which is not motivated by their bottom line, which is why none of the tech giants acted against Trump until he threatened the orderly continuation of the system in which they're all invested.

"Left" media is a tiny, powerless fraction of the media. MSNBC and CNN toe the line of the DNC, a right-wing clique that represents only the interests of finance capital, and which, because it has comprehensively rejected any project of improving people's lives in any material way, has been forced into a politics of performative culture war posturing. Any leftist challenge to the status quo can be quelled by capital's complete capture of the media apparatus and government.

When you say "the left", it's very clear you mean social progressives, and nothing else. You're conflating co-opted woke capitalism with leftism, the same way countless liberals do.

You are however, absolutely correct about the coming repression that will be directed against the populace. It will be mostly directed against the left, as has always been the case, but we will definitely begin to see greater brutality in general as the overall immiseration and precarity of the average person continue to ratchet upwards.

In tandem with this, we'll see ever-increasing social policing of culture-war nonsense, as the social unrest continues to play out in a make-believe symbolic realm completely detached from material reality. People will of course continue to believe that it's "the authoritarian left" or "the bigoted right" that is ultimately to blame, depending of which flavour of news media they consume, missing the symbiotic relationship between two parties that both represent nothing but the short-term financial interests of capital.

1 comments

>>Do you think that any of the organizations that constitute these groups are run by social activists?

it is clear that they are, while they may not be owned by social activists the day to day operations are certainly controlled by social activists

Take the recent effort of google employees to form a union, one not to negotiate pay or working conditions but rather to demand a litany of things around social activism including the power to control the policys and projects of the company

Then there are publishers, tech companies, and universities that continually have their employees protest if their employer engages with anyone that they deem to have "wrong think" see the Reaction at spotify when they brought on Joe Rogan, or reactions to Ben Shapiro speaking at any Campus, or the reaction at Penguin to the publishing of certian books...

To deny these companies are run by social activists is to deny reality itself

>"Left" media is a tiny, powerless fraction of the media.

100% incorrect, the Left enjoys a majorty position in Fiction Media (movies, TV Shows etc), and you can see a clear political shift in narrative of TV Shows.

i like to binge watch shows, even long running shows. So over the course of a month or more I may a long running series back to back, several of them that ran in the early 00's till after Trumps election you can see a clear political messaging shift in them, from an attempt to being "neutral" in their politics to a clear hard left turn.

Further Print News media is clearly Left bias as well probably 70% / 30% left to right positioning

Your lone example of Cable TV news is a weak argument, and if you talk to many conservatives you will find there is a large contingent of people that believe that since Roger Ailes passed Fox News has also taken a left turn...

I think alot of your position is based on the fact that many of these places are "not as far left" as you, or other organizations, but this does not make them "right" either.

CNN is not as far left as MSNBC, but CNN is not right either.

Barrack Obama is not as far left as AOC but that does not make Obama a Republican

> while they may not be owned by social activists the day to day operations are certainly controlled by social activists

Complete fantasy. You're not citing any evidence whatsoever here so I really shouldn't be bothering, but just think this through. When you witness for example Kuerig pull their advertising from Fox News, that is not evidence of some leftist agenda in their management. It is some combination of (a) a response to customer complaints/bad press, (b) an absolute storm of free publicity resulting from the controversy and (c) customer goodwill from the majority of the population. It's exactly the kind of action of the free market conservatives are supposed to be so enamored of. If you honestly think that companies are running socially progressive ads etc. because they are run by social activists, you are (a) just as gullible as all the liberals who eat up that style of marketing and (b) not living anywhere in the vicinity of reality.

You've also cited the example of a union, an organization explicitly in conflict with management, to bolster your argument about the management of organizations being captured by social activists. Absurd.

> if you talk to many conservatives you will find there is a large contingent of people that believe that since Roger Ailes passed Fox News has also taken a left turn...

Someone who would complain about some "left turn" by Fox News is not someone with whom it's worth discussing politics.

> Further Print News media is clearly Left bias as well probably 70% / 30% left to right positioning

Nope. Almost all media is either liberal (read: neoliberal) or conservative. Left wing print media is negligible.

> I think alot of your position is based on the fact that many of these places are "not as far left" as you

My position is not based on the fact that these places are "not as far left" as me. I am not further along on some sliding scale. Yeah, I probably agree with liberals on most social issues. However, I have a qualitatively different outlook to liberals, one rooted in a fundamentally incompatible worldview.

At the end of the day, you've made it clear that the left-right divide is about culture-war issues for you. Some of the repressive apparatus of the state is going to start being directed against the fraction of reactionaries who can no longer be assimilated by the system, but it's not going to approach the level of brutality reserved for e.g. BLM in the foreseeable future. You can continue to enjoy media catering to people totally fixated on the lost cause of relegitimating retrograde social attitudes, because it doesn't pose a threat to people in power.