Heuristics to understand Leftist claims / Follow-up: Various

More than eleven years ago, I wrote about the common tactic of some groups, notably Feminists, of reversing the accusation—to accuse their opponents of exactly the errors and scumbaggery that they are themselves committing and of which the opponents are usually (!) innocent. (With observations in the same extended family made on many other occasions, e.g. in [1] and [2]).

Right now, we have the U.S. situation that:

On the one hand, Biden was elected under extremely dubious circumstances, the Democrats are pushing anti-democratic* election reforms,** the Democrats are trying to circumvent the democratic processes by e.g. executive orders beyond Biden’s legal authority and judicial activism***, etc. Indeed, a year ago tomorrow, I wrote of the end of the world as we know it with regard to Biden’s election and the overall situation.

*I.e. opposed to democracy. Generally, at least in this text, I will use “D” for the party, “d” for the general political term.

**And are absurdly describing the pro-democratic, election-integrity reforms attempted by the Republicans as anti-democratic, in another excellent example of “reversing the accusation”.

***Although, they are currently failing in the SCOTUS, which is exactly why anti-democratic “court packing” is on the table. I note that there are established guidelines for how to amend the constitution. If you want to change it, suggest a bloody amendment. Ditto laws: if you do not like the laws, suggest a change of the law. Do not abuse the courts to push your own will through in violation of democratic processes and the division of power.

On the one other, Hillary is making loud claims about how a Trump (!!!) re-election in 2024 would somehow be the end of democracy …

For FUCK’s sake!

Or consider the stubborn claims that the Democrat party would be the “party of science”, while it ignores any science that is inconvenient (notably, biology and IQ) and distorts or misrepresents what science it uses (e.g. concerning COVID and, likely, the environment). This alleged “party of science” has an approach to science similar to that of Nazi-Germany (e.g. Welteislehre) and the Soviet Union (e.g. Lysenkoism).

Constant situations like these over more than three decades and in several countries have led me to some informal heuristics:

1. If the Left (a Leftist party, someone on the Left, whatnot) raises an accusation against someone else, he is considerably more likely to be innocent than guilty. Consider e.g. the wild accusations of racism (or, more currently, “White Supremacy”) thrown around by various Leftist groups, usually without the slightest shred of proof—and usually based on the skin color of the persons involved.
2. Leftist characterizations of their opponents and their opinions can and should be ignored, as they are almost invariably grossly incorrect, including e.g. factual misrepresentations and unfounded attribution of hidden agendas and motivations. (And characterizations by others, in general and not restricted to the Left, should be taken with a grain of salt.)

   For instance, it is not uncommon that the Left ascribes an intent of “keeping Blacks down” or “keeping women down” for suggestions that have a very different motivation and might (or might not!) have side-effects on various groups. Consider e.g. the U.S. abortion debate (currently flaring up again), where a Republican wish to protect unborn lives* is painted as a vicious attack on women’s rights …

   *I stress that I do not, myself, have a strong opinion on abortion. However, the issue must be approached with an eye on the body of the fetus—not the woman. When is this fetus a human being with human rights? Barring rape, which is behind only a small fraction of unwanted pregnancies, the woman had the opportunity both to not have sex and to have sex with sufficient safety measures. The fetus had no say in the matter.

   Wild and baseless escalations are a particular problem, e.g. in that someone who is anti-Islamism is painted as anti-Islam* or, more likely, anti-Muslim.

   *Which for some reason is considered far worse than being anti-Christianity or, if by someone on the Left, anti-Judaism. (While anyone on the “Right” would immediately be condemned as a Nazi in the latter case.) The odder, as the objective anti-Islam case is stronger in today’s world than either of the other. (Note that “stronger” does not imply “strong”.)

3. The accusations made by the Left are far more likely to apply to the Left, and the more so for the specific person or organization that raises the accusations. For instance, those who make noise about racism are themselves often blatantly racist and almost always worse than those accused.

   In particular, to find out what the Left is currently doing, or is about to do, it might pay to study their current accusations. (Which makes Hillary’s claims all the more chilling.)

4. If the Left makes any claim that is not supported by their opponents and/or strong independent sources, the claim is more likely to be false than true.* Even when a claim does happen to be based in truth, it is extremely likely to have been phrased in a misleading manner or to be missing critical information that would shed a different light on the issue at hand.

   *Which is not to say that claims so supported are necessarily and automatically true.

   It is only slight hyperbole to say that I would not trust the time of day given by a Leftist politician/debater/activist.

5. Claims by the Left about e.g. “for your own good”, “for the good of the people”, “for the greater good” either should be understood as “for the good of the Left” or as referring to some idea of “good” that many or most others will not share. (And I, personally, almost never share.)
6. That the Left makes more noise on a topic often implies that there is less to be concerned about, because the noise serves to overcome voter resistance based on the facts of the matter, which, usually, are that the problem or “problem” either never was a big deal or has ceased to be a big deal.

   A particular problem is issues that have a long history of giving the Left votes, e.g. women’s rights, but where next to nothing is left to do or where the allegedly favored (privileged, whatnot) are now disfavored, and vice versa. Consider (definitely) women and men in Sweden and Germany, and (likely) women and men in the U.S.

7. More noise from the Left often implies merely that the Left is in a stronger position to make noise, often even that few dare protest/voice an alternate opinion or that those opinions are suppressed before they reach the broad masses (note e.g. the current situations with both mainstream media and services like Twitter and Facebook).

   A particular telling example is the current Germany, which has slipped further and further Leftwards during my years here—and where the panic-mongering about Right(!)wing extremism has increased in lockstep. Note e.g. an earlier discussion on far Left gains in the state of Thüringen, where the old-but-rebranded DDR communist party is the main and ruling party. The result was a political panic about … gains by a “far Right” party. With the latest elections and the fall of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, they have a share of the power in no less than four (4!) of the sixteen German states. This is a party that built the Berlin wall to prevent the people from leaving, had no qualms about killing its own citizens, spent enormous resource to spy on the citizens, wrecked the economy, etc.*

   *Does this sound disturbingly like the allegedly free and democratic West in 2021? It does indeed. Let us hope that the emergency breaks are pulled before it is too late.

8. More noise from the Left usually points to an unusually weak set of arguments (even by Leftist standards), for which the loudness of the claims, or the many repetitions of the claims, compensates. Repeat a lie often enough …
9. If the Left suppresses someone’s right to speech, he is almost always correct and the Left simply lacks the arguments to beat him in a fair debate.

   This ranges from global politics to e.g. individual Feminists blogs. (The latter, and the enormous censorship of reasoned arguments and links to statistics, formed a very large portion of my early experiences in the Blogosphere.)

(With reservations for completeness, as I have never put them down in writing before. Note that some items are overlapping.)

Exercise for the reader: Follow closely the political debate in your local country for just one week, while applying these heuristics. Chances are that you will have a far more accurate image of who is or does what afterwards than you did before.

More generally, the Left, even by the already low standards of politics, appears to follow a principle of “it does not matter if we lie to the voters/the public, as long as we get what we want” (as a special case of their strong belief in “the end justifies the means”). I also suspect that there are quite a few on the Left who are so driven by hate (racism, whatnot) that they cannot comprehend that their opponents are less hateful (racist, whatnot) and/or that they project their own attitudes onto others. (In some cases, notably Hillary, Pelosi, and a few “squad” members, I cannot shake the suspicion of genuine mental-health issues—but “not a psychiatrist” applies.)

I repeat my observation in [2] that:

[…] there has been common trends virtually everywhere and “everywhen”, that an the-end-justifies-the-means mentality tends be a Leftist issue more often than “Rightist” issue, that political violence tends to come from the Left, that propaganda lies, defamation, personal attacks, etc., tends to come from the Left, disregard for democratic processes tends to come from the Left, and so on.

Excursion on last year’s end of the world:
The current U.S. situation under Biden is an absolute disaster (and it is not good in the rest of the world either), but still not quite as bad as I had anticipated. The reason is that (a) I had not predicted that some Democrat senators would fall out of line (most notably Manchin) and block or delay various disastrous measures, and (b) I had underestimated the remaining powers of the individual states (de Santis!).

For the long term, there are positive signs reflected in opinion polls and intra-Leftist behavior, indicating that my hopes might be coming true that more and more, even among traditionally solidly Democrat groups (notably, the Hispanics), realize the insanity of the current Left, and that the Leftist factions increasingly turn against each other, as their interests are more and more in conflict and as their time as fellow travelers is coming to an end.

Advertisement