• redtea
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    10 months ago

    Good discussion.

    I quite like some of Julius Deutsch’s ideas about sport and building working class consciousness: https://archive.org/details/Antifascism_Sports_Sobriety_9781629632674.

    I think this may be a better way to go than relying on individual heros. The heros are good for inspiration. But I want to see ML parties with a phys-ed program specifically aimed at teaching the youth how to look after themselves, stay fit, and be physically self confident, etc.

    Taking people who join the gym to look like Brad Pitt and instead building their confidence to get fit/strong without all the baggage of competition and comparison. Could also provide a space for people to make healthy food for each other, too. A community project that doesn’t depend on state grants (and their isn’t controlled by the government and won’t fall apart when the funding is pulled).

    I could be advocating for building and crafting a solidaristic masculinity that isn’t necessarily gendered. Maybe I don’t mean masculinity at all but it might have to look like that to reach the young men who will be attracted by Tate, et al. They think they want that kind of masculinity but it won’t help them overcome whatever makes the alt-right attractive in the first place. Similarly, for whatever the faux-intellectual Peterson is peddling. Maybe it’s respect that the young people want?

    Kinda need space to do this but that can be worked out. Unfortunately, this requires a functional ML party and they’re few and far between.

    The problem is that left-heros will be assassinated or imprisoned and people like Tate and Peterson will be boosted to the moon. They’ll fill your social media feed. Their books will fill every train station. The left can’t compete with that by competing on the same terrain. The left needs to build the infrastructure for nurturing class consciousness in a million places at once, creating a million local heroes for those who are crying out for some kind of community. I.e. we need to understand what neoliberalism has done to us and actively, deliberately, systematically counter it.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      These kinds of sports things sound good but eliminating competition isn’t going to work. People enjoy competition. People seek out and create competition for themselves, it’s interesting, it’s fun, it’s a game.

      I am not saying that non-competition type stuff won’t work either, but you need both. Or you’re just handing over all the people that like competition to the far right.

      Guess where young boys 10-15 go to get role models that are fighters because they’re scared the other kids will beat them up? They look up sports and find the top fighters.

      I actually like the point about making it a collective thing, sort of a movement, a self body improvement left thing. That’s good, but it doesn’t need to also toss out individual rolemodels entirely either.