Dirtbag to me always just meant adopt the same sort of behaviors that fash adjacent people find funny and effective, the whole bullying, demeaning behavior against people you don’t like ie don’t self censor or pay too much attention to verbalized ableism, racism, misogyny, homophobia etc.
But you can’t really be a ‘dirtbag’ and a leftist. Someone can write it out better than I can but, like, they want to evoke images of ‘real communism’, what the hard nosed Soviet Union supposedly represented. But lost in all their bravado was strength and power. Not verbal bullying and that’s all that dirtbag is, calling someone an ugly hard r and essentially running in the same spaces as most right wingers.
To be fair, a lot of us grew up in this same Western/American milieu. We all grew up with it in High School, much of the media we consume values it, this is the only sort of projection of power and strength we know.
The idea was to ditch civility politics and tone policing, but in a society built on stomping on marginalized people that frequently lets people slip into the systemic violence mode they have unpacked and unlearned the least. Which one that is varies from person to person, but for redditors it’s usually misogyny, transphobia or national chauvinism topped off with obligatory and copious amounts of ableism and body shaming.
I’m legit scared this whole "woke 1 " discourse will have the opposite effect and make them more openly chauvinist. In an ideal world, it would exclusively call out the liberalism and lack of class consciousness in the last decade’s identity politics, but it will predictably turn into stabbing trans people in the back, disavowing BLM and saying that “abolish ICE” is too radical and we should instead focus on getting ICE agents into cop unions.
Starting to think this whole dirtbag leftism thing was a mistake. How do we get them to shed the dirtbag, read theory, and actually become leftists?
Dirtbag to me always just meant adopt the same sort of behaviors that fash adjacent people find funny and effective, the whole bullying, demeaning behavior against people you don’t like ie don’t self censor or pay too much attention to verbalized ableism, racism, misogyny, homophobia etc.
But you can’t really be a ‘dirtbag’ and a leftist. Someone can write it out better than I can but, like, they want to evoke images of ‘real communism’, what the hard nosed Soviet Union supposedly represented. But lost in all their bravado was strength and power. Not verbal bullying and that’s all that dirtbag is, calling someone an ugly hard r and essentially running in the same spaces as most right wingers.
I think there’s still a lot of dirtbag mentality on this site that people don’t seem to want to shed.
To be fair, a lot of us grew up in this same Western/American milieu. We all grew up with it in High School, much of the media we consume values it, this is the only sort of projection of power and strength we know.
The idea was to ditch civility politics and tone policing, but in a society built on stomping on marginalized people that frequently lets people slip into the systemic violence mode they have unpacked and unlearned the least. Which one that is varies from person to person, but for redditors it’s usually misogyny, transphobia or national chauvinism topped off with obligatory and copious amounts of ableism and body shaming.
Why did you not mention racism?
You got me there, oof. I seriously overlooked that.
No worries, just wondering about the reason if it was intentional
I’m legit scared this whole "woke 1 " discourse will have the opposite effect and make them more openly chauvinist. In an ideal world, it would exclusively call out the liberalism and lack of class consciousness in the last decade’s identity politics, but it will predictably turn into stabbing trans people in the back, disavowing BLM and saying that “abolish ICE” is too radical and we should instead focus on getting ICE agents into cop unions.