Times change, and so do politics. Here I give a crack at defining the basic political camps as they exist in the US today.
On a long walk through the park I was continuing to digest lots of recent experiences with being doxxed, and participating in various social movement activities, over the past year or so around the Portland area, and for many decades around Portland and the rest of the US before that. In a flash of brilliance it occurred to me that we need new vocabulary to talk about the political landscape of the US today, and I have some terms and definitions for you to consider here. These are all very broad categories that could contain many sub-categories.
Ecumenical Left
The Ecumenical Left is responsible for many of the good things that happen, on the occasions that they do. The main characteristic of this group is a desire to make the world a much more equal and just place, that isn't destroyed in the process by industrial society. This group is motivated by a common opposition to US imperialism, planetary extinction, extreme inequality and the marginalization of any group of people by race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
Within the Ecumenical Left are those who adhere to principles of horizontal organizing who may or may not publicly identify as anarchists, and others working within more top-down organizational structures. It includes organized groups and disorganized groups spanning a wide range of political approaches including pacifist and militant, anarchist, communist, socialist, and social democrat, all with common basic goals in mind. There is a general focus in this more functional end of the left on movement-building, finding common ground, and winning campaigns, whether of the civil disobedience variety or electoral variety or other.
The most militant end of what I would still consider to be the Ecumenical Left include those who believe smashing corporate property is an appropriate tactic. Despite the opposition to this sort of practice by many others within the Ecumenical Left, for fear of alienating the populace or for other reasons, for some who practice this sort of tactic, there is a strict adherence to rules of engagement, out of concern for the same thing.
Wingnut Left
An uncomfortably large element of the broad left has long been of the cliquish, exclusionary sort, and in the age of anti-social media and growing inequality, this element of the left seems to be growing at an alarming rate. It runs the gamut from communists who talk endlessly of their love of Stalin, to those who identify with anarchism or other political philosophies that are oriented towards creating a more just and egalitarian world, presumably.
What characterizes the Wingnut Left is infighting. It is mainly engaged in criticizing or attacking other members of the left who don't see something the way they do. There is a strong tendency in this section of the left to adhere to a rigid and uncompromising orientation, regardless of whether it makes any real sense when applied to reality, because it is morally superior. Moral superiority is far more important than winning or achieving anything on the Wingnut Left. Doxxing members of the right or other leftists that they don't like is a favorite tactic, along with denouncing, disavowing, and calling people out for their transgressions, whether major or minor, with no concern for any possible consequences for their victims or their families.
Although rigidity is a general feature of the Wingnut Left, it is perhaps uniquely capable of engaging in wildly circuitous logic. Among people in this group you can meet those who consider themselves to be communists or anarchists, but who simultaneously believe it is anti-Semitic to call Israel an Apartheid state, or if they're on board with the existence of Israeli apartheid, then they cannot differentiate between a supporter of Israeli Apartheid and an opponent of it, if the apartheid opponent doesn't define anti-Semitism in exactly the same rigid way as the Wingnut Left does, which is somehow surprisingly the same way Netanyahu defines it.
There are, of course, gray areas to be found between any of these broad categories, but if you're trying to determine whether someone is coming from the Wingnut Left, one indication is most of their posts on social media are oriented towards taking down someone else on the left, for perceived transgressions against the codes of moral superiority that are carefully guarded by the Wingnut Left. Any endeavors oriented towards reaching beyond the choir, doing popular education, communicating with people who have different opinions, or even posts related to supporting movement-building efforts will be hard to find a mention of. Gifs involving fascists and cops being hit with projectiles are extremely popular in certain sections of the Wingnut Left, and Twitter accounts mainly dedicated to sharing such gifs are popular in these circles.
Grassroots Liberal
The Ecumenical Left may dabble in electoral politics -- in other countries much more so, because other countries have more functional democratic systems -- but the liberals are eternally hopeful about the possibilities for electoral politics to make society a more just and equal place, even if they may not be interested in as much equality or as much justice as the folks on the left. They generally maintain a delusional state of mind when it comes to the prospects for the Democratic Party to ever become the party they wish it would be, while at the same time they're constantly disappointed that the Progressive Caucus is never the majority in the Congress.
Corporate Liberal
The Corporate Liberal, or the Fake Liberal, makes up the majority of Democratic politicians on the municipal, state, and federal level across the country, because of the nature of our plutocratic, money-driven system, even if the majority of people who vote Democrat are much more progressive than the people they end up electing. For a variety of reasons, mostly opportunism, the corporate liberal thus tends to mouth the talking points and concerns of the grassroots liberals, while proceeding to betray the vast majority of the promises regarding the concerns that got them elected in the first place. The corporate liberal tends to talk about peace while supporting war, talk about equality while supporting policies that lead to greater inequality, talk about affordable housing while instituting policies that lead to a bigger housing market bubble than before, talk about ending poverty and homelessness, while reigning over its growth.
Grassroots Conservative
Much like the grassroots liberal, but whiter, the grassroots conservative is characterized by a similarly delusional degree of disconnection between what the Republican Party is and what they believe it to be, as long as they remain gainfully employed. They believe in a world where it's good to be rich, but there's opportunity for people who aren't rich to become rich, if they work hard enough.
They believe in some version of the rule of law, although they're more resigned to what they see as the necessity for their country to have a bloated military budget, and military bases all over the world, which they believe is playing a generally useful role, although also generally an unappreciated one. What especially differentiates the grassroots conservative from the grassroots liberal are views on social issues such as guns and abortion, along with a tendency to believe that if there's a problem, the answer is probably lower taxes and higher prison sentences.
Corporate Conservative
Like the corporate liberal, the corporate conservative is an opportunist at heart, ruling on behalf of the corporate elite and landed gentry, while saying whatever they need to say in order to appeal to their grassroots conservative constituency, which vastly outnumbers them. When it's opportunistic to do so, the corporate conservative will dabble with the wingnut right, and all the time with the corporate liberals, but they make a show of pretending to believe in things like more guns and no trans girls playing sports in high school, or whatever their conservative constituency is currently obsessing about, determined largely by their Fox-based media diet.
Wingnut Right
The wingnut right includes a wide and growing variety of terrifying people and networks, from the former president to a broad array of mostly white people, who are otherwise from all walks of life, from Class C apartments in the suburbs of Portland to penthouse suites in Manhattan. The wingnut right is completely unhinged from any connection to reality, and believe they can just make it up as they go along.
Usually more on the fringes but recently less so, the ranks of the wingnut right include fascists, white supremacists, and accelerationists who like to pretend to be members of the wingnut left in order to sow division within the ranks of the left more broadly. The ranks of the wingnut right are always amplified through the active participation of lots of undercover cops and other agents, who play the role of trying to render any effective movements, networks, or organizers as ineffective as possible, by sowing discord and spreading disinformation.
The wingnut right has an endless appetite for conspiracy theories which are based on reality, but then go other places. Being obsessed with real or invented conspiracies used to be more a hallmark of the wingnut left or the more apolitical wingnut sector of society, but these days, despite their ranks including many billionaires, the conspiracy theorists most obsessed with billionaires tend to come from the wingnut right and prefer to single out Jewish billionaires that they don't like because they're progressive, such as George Soros, or like the Sackler family, who they don't like because it's very convenient when you're anti-Semitic to begin with, and some of the most evil billionaires in a generation, in the case of the Sacklers, happen to be Jewish. (Hatred of the Sackler family is possibly the only thing that unites almost the entirety of US society, including the wingnut right.)
The wingnut right can be very difficult to distinguish from the wingnut left when they're making accusations against an enemy, because the tendency both groups have is to accuse their enemies of being the polar opposite of what they actually represent. For example, their constant enemy of socialism is one they tend to associate with poverty, misery, and lack of opportunity, when in fact the more socialist-run societies are the ones that have the least poverty and who rank highest in the happiness index and in social mobility.
There is, of course, a lot of crossover between the corporate conservatives and the wingnut right, and they easily form awkward alliances all the time. Currently there appears to be a general consensus in both camps that the 2020 election was stolen, and Black people shouldn't be allowed to vote.
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