many years ago, when i was a baby in radical left spaces, i told everyone i was an anarchist.
i mainly did this because people kept asking my political opinions and i felt i needed to give one. anarchism sounded good in principle, but i hadn't read any theory. i'd read like, a few paragraphs about anarchism on wikipedia, and i thought it sounded fair. i guess i was vaguely pissed off with tankies and figured anarchism was a step away from them in the right direction.
i went on a date with a girl who was politically engaged. she read theory, especially economic theory, and had done for many years. she asked me some really basic questions about my beliefs like "are you a libertarian socialist or an ancap?" and i had no fucking clue what she meant.
so she simplified it and simplified it. until eventually she asked, "do you know what libertarian means?" and friends, i'm embarrassed to say this. there was just silence.
i cringe at the memory, but honestly? i didn't know what libertarianism was. i scrambled for an answer and justified it by saying i was existentially tired and had ADHD, so i found reading theory to be difficult, but i vibed with anarchism in principle.
the funny thing is, years before, she had been a socialist who never read theory, became alienated by socialist discourse, and swung to be a trump supporter who never read theory, before mellowing out politically and choosing to learn about things before forming violent opinions on them.
my point is, i think humans, especially young, privileged and politically isolated idiots like us (especially white tankies in the west who exist online and don't have a personal stake in international politics) are drawn to passionate political attitudes, but doing their homework about it is not checked within the community, so learning about what they believe is largely optional.
i'm sure it's probably subconscious. these people will double down 15 times over if you try and suggest their ideology is misinformed or their understanding is incomplete.
but when the chips are down, i don't think they want to think too critically about it. they're not here to think. they're here to feel supported by their community. and in the moment, their only defense is doubling down, because they've got fuck all else in their arsenal to defend what they're saying.
i'd even say some tankies are afraid of educating themselves. because what if they're wrong? what if they've sought a community that's morally questionable? if you realised that, you'd be ostracized from everyone, your friend and your enemies. better to stick close to the community you know and attack anyone who criticizes you for it.
on october 7, a majority chunk of the radical left community felt pressure to have an opinion very quickly. some of us have been begging them to care for years, and they didn't, and suddenly it mattered. it was being talked about.
so in that first 24hrs they did their googling and frantically tried to learn about it. but the biggest beacon guiding them was the prevailing opinion of their community. once the community stance was clear, they didn't need to research it any more. they could relax.
and everything since then has been defending the community's stance, at all costs, to the point of absurdity.
if you try and learn about the israel-palestine conflict and give up after 24 hours, it's likely you'll form the kind of oversimplified takes being regurgitated by the left right now.
i keep thinking back to myself proudly claiming to be an anarchist without knowing what that meant. i think that's the position a lot of leftists are in now. i didn't feel safe or brave enough to do anything about my limited understanding, and neither do they. so they're just shouting it louder and louder, convincing themselves and each other that they're righteous and infallible, and hoping the details won't come up.
and if they do read about it, they only read commentary written by their community, for their community, and shared within their community. so it becomes an echo chamber.
i wonder what would happen if the rational world stopped fighting them over it and just let them rant. i'm not suggesting we do, but... i genuinely think they would stop caring. they'd stop talking about Israel within a few weeks, maybe quicker, like they did with Ukraine and Sudan and everywhere else.
i'm sure they do care about Gazans in principle, but Gazans are not their #1 concern right now. their #1 concern is feeling like they're right, and morally superior, and surrounded by people who agree with them. once those needs are met i expect their fire would be extinguished and they'd move on very quickly.
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