This is from r/the_donald.
I believe online right-wing communities are more popular and attract members because they don't care about ideological purity, as long as you agree on a few points. And in online left communities? Everyone's on the look out to see if someone steps out of line, criticises North Korea, or Stalin, or whatever. Or supports the wrong leftist movement, like one big US military base in Syria.
I've visited leftist facebook pages, imageboards, discords, and it's always the same shit, what kind of leftist are you (this is very important, you have to find the hat with the proper label on it and wear it at all times) and do you support/criticise all the right causes. For someone new to leftism, that is a lot to navigate through and figure out.
I don't know what the answer is, I just know that's a problem. Our online communities need to be more inclusive. There are the "core" ideas everyone should be on board with: generally the principle "from each according to ability, to each according to need" is a valid one; you have to realise that capitalism has problems shown in many ways and it doesn't matter which way you perceive, experience or see capitalism as bad what matters is that you're anti-capitalist, the details will be worked out later. Do you think capitalism creates extreme wealth inequality? Good, welcome. Do you think capitalism is making our culture poorer for profit? Good, welcome. Do you think the profit motive places the interests of a few above the majority and you think a better way has to be found? Good, welcome, here's some thoughts on it.
The left has become lazy. No one wants to do "emotional labour" or "free labour". "Go read a book (the right book) and come back when you believe what I believe." We're pretending like we're this massive, popular movement and people will just be begging to join our club. The opposite is true.
Often people laugh at Zig Forums for saying they're "white" and then pictures from meetups and IRL show them to be diverse. And none of them give a fuck. Why? Because they agree on a few issues and not even all of them: communists are bad, SJWs are bad, traditional monogamy and marriage is good, some form of religion is good (but most of them don't care if someone is an atheist), might makes right, men should rule, blah blah blah. In an online community what the person looks like doesn't matter, as long as they're LARPing as white supremacists or whatever. The movement grows and absorbs people who do shit like the NZ shooting. Enough people join a movement there will be people who will absorb the propaganda and 'live the memes'. Most Zig Forumsacks are kids or poor people who don't have the means to go to Ukraine for training and travel to NZ and shit. The reality in America is that a lot of people are poor.
But online, the currency and value isn't money, it's the content. And since chans, and fb and everything else are just a platform that doesn't produce any content itself, the content comes from the users. Either as posts, or OC, or images they found. More users means more content and that means more people will be attracted to the site.
Simply, we need to become more inclusive and welcoming. If people hold "wrong" opinions, or support/criticise the wrong countries (honestly, who gives a fuck?) that just means there is an opportunity for them to learn. And they will learn. It's just better that they learn in a leftist context/community/setting than a right wing one. I'm sure if you go on a right-wing discord they start treating you as a friend, then when you're given information you're not told to read a whole book, but are shown information in easily-digestible 'memes' or youtube videos. And no one asks you to grok it all immediately, you're just supposed to go "huh" and then store it for later, because next thing you're laughing at the black dude being beaten by a cop in a hilarious video.
We need to stop acting like leftism is a university and start thinking of it as a popular movement. By definition, a popular movement will include all kinds of people, some of which you may not like. And that's ok! You don't actually have to get along with everybody. Do you see anyone on Zig Forums criticising the NZ shooter because they disagree with his politics or his manifesto? No. Most of them are praising him. They support Trump despite his strong ties to Israel, because they agree on some views, but not all, and it doesn't really matter as long as he can further their agenda. We're so scared of supporting anyone in the fear that it might be revealed later that the person said something "bad". We dissect a person's public persona, because we only want the purest. Like some fucking religious cult.
It's fucking bullshit.
