The left is not a monolithic block of automatons. There is some large number of persons who support most progressive positions but decry this sort of top-down control of language along with the way it’s used to enforce an orthodoxy of opinion. Labelling this as an “absolute state” of the left is a mischaracterization of the positions of most progressives I know.
> Sorry, you have no idea what you're talking about.
> See, I can make blanket, unsupported statements, too, and pretend they're facts!
This isn't an argument.
> (Also love the sibling's comment about the right. If you're gonna paint the left with the brush you've chosen, gotta do the same with the right.)
I don't gotta do anything. Obviously the right can be and is criticized in a generalized way like I'm doing with the left now, but I'm not talking about the right here.
Were you under the impression that the right does not receive generalized criticism on the internet or this web site? Or that your comment is a rebuttal to what I wrote?
By all means feel free to criticize conservatives / right wing. They certainly do make it easy, you're right about that if nothing else.
I'm downvoting you not because you're entirely wrong, but because you've chosen to be somewhat right in an irritating, unproductive, flamebaity manner.
No, this is not "the absolute state of the left". This is the state of some loud people who think they have the final word on ethics and morals. Unfortunately, many others have allowed them to flourish, rather than shutting them down.
I agree with some of the items on Stanford's list, though most of the words I think are pretty harmless, or at least should be. That doesn't mean that some people wouldn't feel harmed by them, but it's just my personal opinion that the harm is minimal, or that yes, some people do need to learn that not everything is about them, and that language has moved on, and no one actually associates the word they're using with the thing they feel offended about. (Like, if I were to say something was "lame", I would not expect a person who couldn't walk to be offended by that, as that's just not what "lame" means anymore. Ditto for words like "dumb".)
But "master"/"slave"? Sure, those words suck. "Tranny"? Sure, 90% of the people using it are using it as a slur, and I don't want to be associated with shitty people like that. "Black-" prefixes meaning things that are bad, and "white-" prefixes meaning things that are good? Yeah, screw that, that's bullshit.
But then we get to... "Tarball"? Associated with "tarbaby"? What, are you kidding me? "Brown bag"? I'd never heard of the association with "brown paper bag test"; I always thought of it as "brown bag lunch", as in the kind of paper bag I'd always use to bring my lunch with me to school when I was a kid. Is the negative association actually a thing, or is this just Stanford's hand-wringing over nothing?
I'm also really annoyed by the "person-first" stuff. Not only is "person who has immigrated" a mouthful, but I don't know any actual immigrants who would consider being called an "immigrant" offensive. Worse, I think trying to put a stigma on words like "immigrant" ends up putting a stigma on the entire idea of being "a person who has immigrated", which is a shitty thing to do.
I've gone to the effort to write all this out to attempt to demonstrate to you that not everyone on the left -- or even a "majority of mainstream" or whatever you think -- would come up with or agree with the entirety (or even a majority) of a boneheaded list like this. My perspective is absolutely not unique in this, either.
Hopefully it helps you feel better to shoot the messenger, and eventually helps you get the courage to stand up against it. Would be really great if the left actually focused on important issues instead of this unscientific divisive bullcrap. I'd better add the disclaimer here that I also hope the right does too, because I seem to have twisted a lot of panties and enraged some valiant "nazi" hunters falling over themselves to bully me for daring to laugh at this pathetic clownery.
We should play semantics here. Elite liberals control the institutions, not some imagined socialist, communist, or anarchist boogiemen. Stanford is one of the most elite of elite institutions, and I don't see ANYONE there or any high profile graduates attempting to wrest the means of production from their alumni funders.
Insitutional elites are not liberals anymore, just opportunists. Those Alumni funders are largely possible because ultra-wealthy elite institutions have tax-exempt status. Plus, they are allowed to admit whoever they want despite taking in lots of federal funding. So the offspring of oil-barons and politicians comingle with the top 0.1% of academic talent, creating the next generation of crony capitalists.
But they are the mainstream left's thought-leaders and popular politicians, and they get broad support and little criticism.
How many significant leftist politicians, journalists, news corporations, academics, or other commentators criticize this kind of rubbish coming from Stanford? How many polls of left leaning people would disagree with it? Very few I suspect.
I'm not. Clearly they've long since abandoned any pretense of being an actual labor movement, but this is what the left is now and everybody knows what is meant. The majority of self identified left-leaning people will vote for and support democrat party politicians.
It's just as unhelpful to try to claim there are no right wing politicians in the United States because none of them actually support free markets or small government. Technically true by at least some of the multitude of definitions, but it's just being contrary.
I get that a lot of leftists are probably deeply embarrassed and upset by what their movement has become. I was too. But language evolves and so do political movements, and it's more correct to say that the leftist movement in the United States (and largely the western world) are no longer of and for the worker.
They certainly aren't traditional liberals either, defined by support for liberty, individual rights, equality, ad tolerance.
No one knows what to call the Democrats' political philosophy. It's not really leftist, although it sometimes claims to want to be, and it certainly isn't liberal in this age of woke authoritarians.
