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poor leftists talk about poverty, labor aristocrats get uncomfortable and insist that sociological classes aren’t materialist. “all that matters is that we’re working class - we’re all in this together”
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black leftists talk about racism, whites get uncomfortable and insist that they’re not personally part of the problem. “we mustn’t allow the bourgeois to divide the proletariat along racial lines - we’re all in this together”
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female leftists talk about patriarchy, men get uncomfortable and insist that it hurts them too. “this men vs women stuff is reductive anyway - we’re all in this together”
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third world leftists talk about imperialism, americoids get uncomfortable and insist that red white and blue lives matter too. “what happened to the international working class - we’re all in this together”
you don’t have to invite yourself to every form and experience of oppression. anyone with a baby’s consciousness of intersectionality ought to be capable of admitting when they have privilege
ur getting it
I used to argue with pmc urbanist types and the conversation always went something like:
me: “true it’s inconvenient to have to walk far to the subway station but if u build a new station here then property values will shoot up and hundreds of poor ppl will be evicted. idc about the tech workers”
them: “I hate gentrification discourse. you can’t just hold back progress for the sake of a minority of people. are you going to deliberately sabotage the city so that better off workers don’t want to live there?”
struggling against ppl like that can be a matter of life and death for the poor. any day of the week they’ll throw us under the bus for the sake of their own stratum’s restaurant selection. if we show solidarity to them they either won’t notice or shrug and find it completely natural bc it comports with their own priorities. but they will never support us in return unless they already see it as in their interest. that’s how the real world works. where does that leave @UlyssesT@hexbear.net’s vague feel-good notion of solidarity?
I don’t actually know.
The best I can do is say that some tech workers are still workers, but I’d have to find a line to draw between “just trying to survive” and “actively making the world worse for the sake of nerd rapture.”