So, I might overexplain on this blog sometimes, but for those who may be new, maybe come here from a Rammstein community or something, and who wonder, given my spiels, "gee, am I even left wing at all?", I figured that I would give my opinion on SJWs and how my opinion of them as shifted over the years. I'll be focusing primarily on my experience with them as a liberal, or someone on the left, but I will start all the way from the beginning.
2004
So, I started really getting into politics in 2004, when I was in high school. At this point, I WAS a fundamentalist conservative, and I listened to people like Rush Limbaugh. And I largely refered to these people in a derogatory way like "feminazis." Ironically, I did read "Understanding the Times" back then, but since it was the old version, it didn't include postmodernism, so that whole worldview was left out of it. But yeah. I figured these activists were around every corner, they were problematic, blah blah blah. What I didn't understand though was at the time, I was mostly approaching the issue from the perspective of a strawman, and that these people actually barely existed back then.
2008-2010
As you guys know, I moderated a lot of my conservative tendencies from 2006-2008ish and became more of a Ron paul type libertarian. I still found liberal culture on the subject obnoxious, but I did become more open to left wing positions like gay rights during that time period. I still found the SJW types obnoxious, and the 2008 democratic primary, as an outsider, felt like a crapshow to me between the Obama supporters calling the Clinton supporters racist and the Clinton supporters calling the Obama supporters sexist, and them both calling everyone else both, but again, I was still conservative enough that I didn't care much at all.
Anyway, in the latter years of my college career I did take some higher level sociology courses that did make me a bit more sympathetic to these issues. I learned about stuff like racism, sexism, and privilege from a more objective standpoint, and while I couldn't say I particularly agreed with the perspectives completely, I did gain respect for them and realized that systemic perspectives are real and valid. I still didn't like the idea of affirmative action, racial quotas, and stuff like that, but I did kind of move toward at least sympathizing with where they were coming from with that stuff.
And here's what a lot of leftists REALLY need to understand. I can UNDERSTAND your theories, and STILL disagree with you. And here's why. Even if this stuff is factually valid, as I said, these worldviews are lenses through which we see the world. And there are many of these lenses. Critical theories are merely one subset of all tools in our intellectual toolboxes, and sometimes they are not the best or more compelling theories. I feel like a lot of leftists get so wrapped up in their worldviews that they become their entire world. They just see that one lens as objective reality, and everything else as flat out wrong. Which is why politics is so polarized on these issues where a lot of people adopt these worldviews with this creepy religious fervor, and other people deny their validity altogether. And here I am in the middle these days being like "meh, they're valid, but i prefer not to approach the world in that way." Which explains my modern perspective.
2012
2012 was the year I became a liberal. As you guys know, after the tea party took over congress, I had some serious falling outs with the GOP throughout 2011, and by 2012, I was questioning everything, not just conservatism, but also Christianity. And ultimately, I became an atheist and a liberal, which is what this blog is named after. I did that...in 2012. I literally left plato's cave and came to see the world in a totally different light, and now I spread the word from there.
That said, let's systemize my own perspective with understanding the times again. You have christianity, a religious worldview, islam, another religious worldview, and also four more liberal worldviews, secular humanism, cosmic humanism, marxism leninism, and postmodernism. The worldview that really appealed to me most of those was secular humanism. I became a more traditional liberal with more traditional progressives and liberal values. I was a modernist, not a postmodernist. I believed in objective reality and argued for what i believed in. I wasn't big on the whole subjective stuff as much. For me, the purpose of morality and institutions is to better the human condition. Postmodernists have some good points sometimes, but again, I didn't EMPHASIZE that stuff. I can value the stuff intellectually, just as i also valued socialism, without actually drinking the kool aid on that stuff.
And as far as postmodernism goes, again, I understood it, I kind of sympathized with it, but as a white male secular humanist, it didn't click with me as a MAJOR aspect of my worldview. Still, coming over to the left, I had respect for it, and those causes, and believed in working with those people toward mutually beneficial causes. Because again, privilege is real, there are issues there, and I do understand that people who value that stuff are an important part of the liberal coalition. Just as conservatives had a lot of different sub groups like libertarians, fiscal conservatives, trumper types, religious fundamentalists, etc, the left had these people. And I wasn't particularly huge on their politics, but again, it came with the turf so I was willing to accept it.
Still, given my newfound position in the secular community, I did notice there were some rifts there. Not long before I joined up, we had elevatorgate, which I largely avoided, but I largely didn't sympathize with the perspective, as an autistic guy who thinks navigating dating is a minefield enough and doesn't need to be called "creepy" just for showing interest. If anything I kind of agreed with Dawkins takes on the subject.
...I guess that really is kind of a prelude to how I would feel about Rammstein a decade later.
And then we had atheism+, which was this attempt to mix atheism with social justice advocacy, and kinda went over like a lead balloon in the community. Not because atheists aren't progressive, but because most atheists were...educated white males and that stuff doesn't really go over big with us. We weren't against a lot of the causes mostly, we just weren't super passionate or zealous about these kinds of issues.
And that's the thing. When I came over to the left, even among the left, social justice advocates were fringe. They meant well, they wanted to make the world a better place, and I do think that the rest of society has some things to learn from their perspective on things, but they were just a little too zealous, and a little too pushy, and a little too abrasive. I understand why they had a bad rap, both as an ex conservative and (in retrospect) a relatively moderate social liberal.
I mean, when I came over to liberalism, I came into it with a knowledge of all of the downsides of it, and that is reflected in my own ideology. My own ideology formed both out of a rejection of conservatism, an embrace of liberalism, but also knowledge of all of the weaknesses and flaws of liberalism, with my emerging ideology being an attempt to correct for those and improve liberalism as a whole. And one of the shifts I made was to just quietly downplay the social justice stuff. Because it was abrasive, it was obnoxious, it got a bad rap, and it lost the left supporters.
Again, I understood it, but I didn't embrace it because even among the left those guys were kind of creating some uncomfortable rifts and drama and I just tried to downplay and stay away from that.
2014
In 2014, the crap really hit the fan on the internet with the gamergate scandal. I mean you can read the details of the scandal in the above link (and it is relatively biased IMO), but I'm going to be honest. I was too busy focusing on developing my human centered capitalist ideology around that time to care. I mean, here's the thing. I generally like to avoid a lot of cultural drama involving the SJWs, but if you want to know my actual opinion on gamer gate, I'll say this. BOTH SIDES WERE WRONG.
I'm sorry gamers, but we do have a bit of a misogyny issue in our communities. Gaming is predominantly male, and any time a girl is in our presence, the combination of poor social skills and sexual desire leads to constant harassment of women. I understand the perspective of a lot of guys, in some ways even in my 30s I AM that socially inept gamer guy, but...yeah. There are issues there.
Now, the "gamers" will say it was about ethics in journalism, and some woman sleeping for good ratings, and that is an issue, but then the guys would be like harassing and doxxing the poor girl, and honestly, why is this such a big issue anyway? Like, call out the crap and move on. I don't understand why this issue blew up like it did.
And then you had the SJWs....I'm sorry, but they ARE annoying. SJWs have this tendency to just militantly interject themselves into our fandoms in order to try to force us to change, and honestly, not everything has to, or is going to conform to your stuff. The whole zoe quinn issue seemed like a pretext for SJWs to declare war on gamers and gaming culture in general and to try to reform it to meet their standards, which is where you're going to get people to unceremoniously tell you to screw off. And to some extent, the SJWs deserve it. Just like with rammstein now and how they're trying to create a "metoo" movement in the music industry and want to basically cancel Rammstein, they tried to do it about a decade ago with gaming. And that stuff just pisses everyone off and created a divide in the gaming community that has lasted for years, where every time a game looks a little too inclusive (like overwatch) or you have "women in games", some people are going to lose their crap about it.
And honestly, both sides are wrong. The SJWs are wrong for trying to shove their values down everyone's throat, and the gamers are wrong for being too shrill in complaining about it. And honestly, for the most part, I just didn't care. Yes, the new ghostbusters had women, yes, it was horrendously bad, but why put so much energy out on this? Arent there more important issues to focus on? I felt like there were far more important things to talk about and focus on. But then with the next wave of this culture war, I guess I would be dragged into it too...
2015-2016
So what happened in 2015-2016? We all know. The 2016 presidential election. And what happened in the 2016 presidential election? Trump got elected. Okay, but other than that, what about within the democrats in particular?
....
Bingo.
Now, imagine being me. I came over in 2012 as a secular humanist looking to take on fundamentalist christianity. And then I shifted to economic issues believing that we needed a whole new economic philosophy and for the left to retake the overton window so that we could actually fix our economic issues.
Who would I support in 2016? It seemed obvious bernie was the best option. The dude wasnt perfect, he didn't support UBI but he supported literally everything else I supported that I had been working on. He would be a nice figure to shift the overton window so that we could all have semblance of a decent future.But the democratic party had other plans.
As we know, the Hillbots were obnoxious in 2015-2016. They had no good arguments for their candidate, her policies sucked and flew in the face of what I came to believe, but I was told I better just accept her or else. And what was their primary weapon in beating us down? IDENTITY POLITICS.
These guys created this "bernie bro" narrative. That everyone who liked bernie was an educated college aged male who was racist and sexist, and then she leaned heavily into that. She pandered to african americans shamelessly, despite being very moderate, and for some reason, it worked. And she also called us sexist constantly. We hated women, we didn't understand black people, blah blah blah, and she managed to outflank us with the identity vote where bernie only got around 45% of votes. Not a bad showing, but it was quite clear he was hamstrung, and identity politics was the weapon.
And if you go back and read my analysis of the 2016 democratic convention, you'll see I mentioned that there seemed to be a lot of talk about all of these different identity groups, but I felt completely unrepresented. Even worse, I felt MARGINALIZED, by virtue of being a secular white male with left wing economic ideas. And I was so pissed at the democratic party for how they treated me that I voted jill stein in a swing state, and then trump won. Way to go dems, way to go.
Ya know, at this point in time, I was blindsided by this. I really did think that despite how weird and extreme they were, ultimately SJWs were still allies and we needed to see eye to eye with each other. I was willing to accept whatever identity nonsense they would push, if they supported my ideas too. but they wouldnt support my ideas at all. They expected me to just bend over and accept their stuff, but then they would just bully me out of trying to stand by mine. And I wouldn't accept it. And that was the first rift i REALLY had with these guys. Before that, they were just the weirdo extremists I tried to ignore, but also tried to be nice to, and now they decided to take shots at me. Hooh boy. Yeah. That really damaged my relationship with them.
2017-2018
Things didn't improve after Trump was elected either. If anything they got louder, more shrill. They started showing their really illiberal qualities in the interlude years between the 2016 and 2020 election cycles. They would talk about beating up "fascists", and you dont just do that to people. Even nazis in normal peace time. But, they just wanted to suppress those they didnt agree with and terrorize them for daring to have different views. Now, I dont agree with nazis at all. That should be obvious, but like everyone else, they have rights under the law and should be treated with respect until they cross a line to do something illegal. If they wanna do their own intimidation or terrorism crap, THEN you go after them. Ideally with institutional means. But you don't just...silence people you disagree with or physically assault them, that's insane. And it kinda represented a red line for me as being "illiberal."
And then you had the cancel culture nonsense too. The whole "it's okay to just sick a mob on someone and ruin their life for saying bad things, because free speech has consequences". If free speech has "consequences", then maybe it's not really free speech. Just my opinion. But yeah, these guys got weirdly extreme with Trump in office, becoming as extreme as the orange crapstain's supporters.And I didn't like it. These guys were like a cult.
Still, I did try to at least sympathize with them somewhat, as allies of the left. You scratch my back, i scratch yours. Basically, you support my UBI and M4A crap, and I'll look the other way with your weirdo social justice crap. But again, you can't negotiate with these guys. They want it all their way and won't give you anything in return.
2019-2020
As we went into the 2020 election cycle, it was the same crap. It got really freaking crazy here. I had lost friends in 2017-2018 over some of this social justice nonsense, and as things picked up in 2019, it didn't improve. Some defriended me because they thought Yang was promoting white supremacist talking points because he talked about problems white people had with drugs and economic destitution. It didn't get much better when I supported Bernie either. While in 2016 he was accused of not being social justicey enough, he dialed it up massively in 2020, and he was STILL attacked for his positions on things. It goes to show it wasn't about the position, it was just rhetoric to bully people into supporting centrist candidates. But for some reason it keeps working. And that just led to a lot of condescension about how I just "don't get" black people. And it just alienated me more and more. Because I'm apathetic on race issues. And then BLM happened, and most people were initially supportive but then they went full on stupid going after cops in my local area who *checks notes* shot POC running at them with knives and crap. I'm sorry, but if you charge a police officer with a weapon, don't be surprised if you die. Whatever goodwill these guys had was lost. And ultimately in 2020, they used the social justice stuff and privilege shaming to once again try to bully us into voting blue. Once a friend of a friend said something about how we just gotta take one for the team because we're white and we gotta check our privilege and vote for our POC brothers and sisters, and I just kinda realized at that moment that yeah, I was done. Screw these guys. I'm NOT giving up my concerns on the altar of white male liberal guilt. I'm just not.
2021-2022
As you guys know, I really sat back and really rethought a lot of political alliances in the years following the 2020 election. And I kind of really focused on what I AM for, and what I'm NOT for, and during this time, I became a lot more openly hostile toward a lot of left wing groups I previously held back on. With SJWs, I started realizing, yeah, these guys are just nutcases you can't negotiate with and you just gotta tell them to take a hike. They're crazy. It's like a goldwater moment with the religious fundamentalists and how it's like "i hope we dont get taken over by these people because tha'ts bad news and they won't compromise." And they are. They're a threat to free speech, they're a threat to civil society. They're explicitly ILLIBERAL. They want their "social justice" and they wont take no for an answer. They will tar and feather anyone who doesn't get their way. And given how they just kept getting in my face with their obnoxious "you don't get black people' stuff and stuff like that it's just like, yeah screw it, these guys are too hostile.
To be fair they arent the only left wing faction I've distance myself from. I've also been more vocal in going after progressives and socialists who crap on things i support because they dont fit their increasingly insane purity tests, and my relationship with the centrists is as sour as ever (although possibly improving a little when they dont piss me off as Biden ain't BAD). So yeah, I'm just politically homeless on the left. I'm left of the liberals, Im right of the leftists, and culturally, I'm a centrist libertarian who leans left nominally but given existing battle lines I really am more centrist.
2023
And now these guys are trying their cancel culture crap on Rammstein. Don't get me wrong, I was actually really sympathetic to the original accuser at first. I mean, I even itneracted with them briefly the night of the concert on reddit and told them to go to police immediately. They didn't. And now they're waging a stupid social media crusade while her story falls apart. And now the SJWs are in a tizzy and literally wanna cancel rammstein over extremely dubious accusations. It's bullcrap. Well, I'm gonna support the band, innocent until proven guilty. if there's anything i learned over the years, it's that you cant give these guys an inch. They'll take a mile. And then they won't stop. They're crazed ideologues and you can't reason with them or compromise with them. And just like with everything else, they poison everything they touch.
So...what am I? Left? Center? Right?
Well, I'd call myself on the left nominally. I definitely lean left, even socially. Im just not crazy about it. I'm center left. Even though i have personal spirituality now (that happened in 2019, ironically around the time rammstein's untitled album came out...) i still support secular politics and ethics mostly. My own spiritual views dont belong in government unless they can be justified via secular logic and reasoning. I still support all of the left wing positions I always have. Pro choice, pro gay marriage, pro trans, pro do what you want, really. Im a bit more moderate on issues of social justice, immigration, guns, etc., but I find that to just be reasonable. Leftist extremists get weird on those issues. I'm more traditional lib left rather than orange libleft.
On feminism I've been figuring out where i stand on that and while i dont like to call myself a feminist due to how loaded it is, my views are akin to liberal feminism, which focuses on equal rights under the law and the liberation and empowerment of women. When I see these weirdo radfems calling rammstein sexist and arguing women in their 20s can't consent to sex with a rock star due to vague "power imbalances" (seriously? most women in row 0 have more freedom than most workers under capitalism), these guys seem weird. Like they're the same feminists as the weirdo anti porn ones who think sexual objectification of women is evil and must be stopped at all cost. Which is hilarious because i know a lot of women in the rammstein community and most of them are THIRSTY AF for till.
Honestly, I think it's really important to note that liberals and leftists arent the same thing. Leftists are often...illiberal. They dont care about institutions or the rule of law or democracy. They just want their goals at all costs and risk destroying the foundation of free society in the process. And even if I have a lot of issues with a lot of liberals, especially on economics, on social issues im WAY closer to a liberal than a leftist. Liberals often end up opposing conservatives AND leftists because both end up having reactionary tendencies, which is what's happening now. First we had the religious right, and now the alt right, and we now also have to deal with this weirdo social justice left. And I oppose all of these factions to support roughly the same brand of secular liberalism/libertarianism that I have since 2012.
Economically, yes, I am further left. As I said, left of liberal, right of leftist is a good descriptor. I'm a human centered capitalist, which is more progressive than most liberals, but somewhat less extreme than leftists. I kinda occupy the same economic space as FDR and the social democrats, except that I tend to forgo awkward old solutions that are less than ideal and obsession with jobs for UBI and my anti work stuff. As I like to say, I'm both radical and moderate at the same time and it's hard to nail me down where i end up pissing off everyone.
But yeah. I just wanted to explain exactly where I stand on this stuff. First i hated SJWs as a conservative, then I came to understand and sympathize, but never really go hard into that stuff. I largely ignored them, then they repeatedly pissed me off to the point they alienated me and i lack sympathy mostly, and now I just do my own traditional liberal/libertarian thing of opposing reactionary elements on both the right AND the left.
As I like to say, I didn't really get that much more moderate than I have been since 2012, I'm mostly just realizing i was never as crazy left as the current left is socially, and I've recognized my obvious boundaries on that.
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