I can’t really think of a reason for that as Reddit is hated somewhat equally by “both” sides of the spectrum. It’s just something I find interesting.
I can’t really think of a reason for that as Reddit is hated somewhat equally by “both” sides of the spectrum. It’s just something I find interesting.
Well, I was born in Portugal and lived there until my 20s, at a time when the country was profoundly backwards in social issues, and then became an immigrant in The Netherlands, which I was for almost a decade during my young adult years, so I ended up wholehearthedly adopting the dutch version of Tolerance.
Now, remember that The Netherlands was maybe the first country to, for example, legalized gay marriage (in fact some of my colleagues there were British “refugees” who had move there so that they could get married with their partners) and even for a while had as leader of their far-right party (I kid you not!) an openly gay guy, and this kind of thing applies to a lot of other areas: for example, 20 years ago they already had 18% of “housemen” - stay at home fathers - and their tolerance on drug consumption is well known.
And their whole Tolerance practice is based on “it’s all normal”, “we’re really all the same in what matters” and “it’s not up to me to pass judgment on others”, a view were for example discrimination on sexual orientation or religion is as ridiculous as descrimination on eye color or hair color: only a nutter would treat people differently because of any such things.
So for me the present day Anglo-Saxon format of Identity Politics were people are still classified on who they love or the genes they were born with and then measures are proposed and judgments made based on those group-membership classifications, is actually not progressive at all but rather regressive, and not just by years but by decades - it’s like going back into some half-way between that Portugal of 3 decades ago (fortunatelly a lot better now) and The Netherlands.
I absolutelly can understand how in an environment where there is massive descrimination people of those groups discriminated against have to get together in order to fight against it (after all, “there is strength in numbers”), correct the injustices that have been done and change the system were such injustices are repeatedly done impunity (sometimes by the very State which should protect all citizens).
However the objective should be to, as such systemic injustices are eliminated, eventually end up with the dutch mindset (we’re all the same, this is all normal, who am I to judge others) in the minds of everybody, and that’s not at all possible if you keep on classifying people and effectivelly saying “these people are different”, “this characteristic people have been discriminated by is extra important” (rather than normal), and practice “we should judge others”, because you really can’t have a natural fair and equal treatment on something if keep on dividing people on those things and keep emphasising those human characteristics as huge differences, and without fair and equal treatment becoming natural in the minds of most people, the fight will never be over and you’ll constanty have pushback.
As I said, the intentions are good, but the methods are not and they are way too easy to subvert by those who care only about their personal upsides, even those on completelly opposite sides of the political spectrum who want to manipulate the masses via induced rage.