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Joe Lott's avatar

My take as a centrist who moved well left over the past few decades is that large heterodox communities will always have a loud and disagreeable element, efforts to 'cancel' people are what that is. Innovation happens when people push through those boundaries and show the community as a whole that the new ideas are compatable. The left as far as I've known it has never been homodox, it's always been about different people with an underlying base of goals built around respect for all.

The right from a political perspective is homodox and provides the illusion of freedom when the whims of the power seeking politicians is the only goal it has ever served.

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Andrea Maxand's avatar

I grew up with very left-leaning parents, and I've been in left-leaning circles my whole life. In my personal experience (which is not, of course, a wide sample of the experiences of people on the left) there has been a shift in left-centric culture from then to now. Cancel culture never used to exist, for one. I had my own experiences during the Bernie Bro era of being shouted down on Twitter by far leftists (and by shouted down, I mean repeatedly attacked) merely for expressing an opinion that wasn't 100% pro-Bernie. (And in terms of domestic policy goals, I'm 100% aligned with Bernie, my dad voted for Bernie in the primary for the 2016 election - that's the kind of left-leaning family I come from and the kind of values I embrace.) It got to a point where I was afraid to even ask people questions in public (on Twitter) because I didn't want to be attacked by hordes who didn't think my views were "correct." Whether it was real people, or bots & trolls, I can't be sure. But the effect was to shut down my desire to attempt to engage in dialogue. And it wasn't just online. I also had similar experiences in person. I think on the left there has been, in maybe the last 10-15 years, a growing tendency to believe people are "evil" or "stupid" if they don't hold to a certain set of beliefs. I've felt it, I know others have felt it, and I stand by saying that this is a real problem. It's good to engage with ideas you don't agree with. It's healthy, even if you end up thinking exactly what you did to begin with. It's good to realize not everyone thinks like you, and to learn to live in that reality. I grew up with conservative friends, and we used to argue politics for *fun*, in the spirit of being Americans in a country where such a thing is allowed and encouraged. And if we want a free society, it's imperative that we allow for disagreement in discourse amongst ourselves, regardless of our personal political views.

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Gigi's avatar

It isn't the same. In the spring of 2016, I attended an Educator's Conference at Exeter and discovered the far left had lost its mind. Our group leader, a trans male, began stressing the importance of the new trans platform. I told him that from Stonewall in 1969 to 2015 gay marriage the summer before was 46 YEARS, and expecting the country to gravitate to codifying trans concerns was going to take more than 6 months. I was honest about my reservation of shining a spotlight on it. He was outraged and instantly accused me of being transphobic.There were other disagreements I won't listen here, but his hostility was real and prevented anyone from discussion many topics at the conference. Nowadays, I don't give a rat's behind what they think, but it took a few years to insist on the pushback. People who were FURIOUS with me now say they were glad I wasn't intimidated, but so many were, and ARE. It's a real problem.

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Andrea Maxand's avatar

IMO we need to re-learn how to foster a spirit of “Your perspective is welcome and important, and so is the perspective of everyone else in this room. And if we need to reach a consensus, some of us might not get everything we want. And if you didn’t get everything you want this time, you can keep pushing, keep advocating for your perspective, and bring it up again next time.” It’s frustrating, and it’s too slow, but that’s how change happens. As a woman, there are a number of items on my “change agenda” that I’ve yet to see come to fruition. (And other items I thought were settled that are moving backwards.)

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