Strange - I interpret a lot of the far right movements to be very immature. MAGA enthusiasts would seem to fit a lot of those descriptions and there does seem to be a lot of childish opinions not anchored in reality spouted from far-right politicians (e.g. it conflicts with MY religion, so it should be banned).
I agree, almost all of far * movements are immature. The antiquated left-right political dimension is a circle with a very small gap between the extremes
So basically you're saying that people presenting infantile traits end up in... Immature ideologies.
It has nothing to do with left or right, you yourself is saying the left-right dimension is antiquated but still using the term to try to pull your argument.
It has to do with people incapable of thinking in higher-level orders, to understand nuance; to understand systems and how they relate to oneself, others and societies; to understand more mature views of the world, and to be able to parse through those views. They are present in any part of the political spectrum but the more immature sides attract more immature people.
You could just have avoided the whole political jab, it'd be a more interesting conversation.
I didn't read it as a "jab". I think it's important because people on the left often justify doing extreme things for "good" reasons, while people on the right justify doing extreme things for "moral" reasons. In other words, both sides also attract mature - indeed, philosophically diverse and well-marinated - people who are willing to say that the ends justify the means precisely because they understand one version of history and have drawn drastic conclusions from it. People who have thoroughly thought-out belief systems and historical examples to back up their contentions - and who have even considered or flipped from opposing points of view - are much more dangerous as spreaders of radicalism than any immature true believer.
The jab was more targeted because one of these extremes is much more represented than the other, currently. It has become popular to be far left; it hasn't been popular to be far right in decades.
> It has become popular to be far left; it hasn't been popular to be far right in decades.
It's become popular in your cohort to be far left perhaps - but it hasn't in mine, and it definitely hasn't in the generation currently in high school.
Note that I don't care about that source in particular, it was just the first one that came up when I searched. The point is, that school had a vocal "rebellion" against what is commonly seen as a leftist plank. The reaction of the school's administration - and now, the media - certainly hasn't helped. If anything it has solidified those kids' views.
For me, where I live (the US "Mid-South") it never became popular to be on the left. While perhaps "far" right isn't exactly popular; it's not uncommon, is accepted, and being on a moderate/right position is by far the majority of adults.
As dumb as it sounds on its face, I honestly believe that "memes got Trump elected". The popularity of Internet culture, the sheer amount of nuance you can pack into a single image meme, and the sense of tribalism that comes from following the evolution of various memes (as in "image meme formats") over time that prevents "others" from understanding why they're funny is... well, it's hugely influential.
If you see yourself as being on the left or far left, and you believe that the right is "uncool", I think you're going to be in for a rude awakening. The left-wing anti-establishment in the US has been the establishment for a long time now. Young people tend to be rebellious, and the only way to rebel against a rebellious culture is to embrace conformity.
> it hasn't been popular to be far right in decades.
I think we are living in very different realities then. I had never seen in my life vocal and open support for white supremacism as it's been since around 2015, I'm not in or from the USA, mind you. I also had never seen popular figures with the youth to be spouting Nazi-adjacent rhetoric as I've seen in the same time frame.
I believe you should look better into your biases... Everything has become more polarised, and support for fascism and/or protofascists has grown in a way I had never expected it could happen again after WW2.
Do you think that the voters of Trump are far right? Some of them are, sure. The success of Trump was due to the failure of the Democrats, not the popularity of far right.
The rhetoric of the far-right definitely became more commonplace, it's not necessarily that the majority Trump's voters are far-right but he has definitely opened a floodgate to empower the far-right not only in the USA but in other countries as well.
If you hang out with Nazis, if you brush up with Nazis, you are very likely to become a Nazi yourself because no one that rejects Nazis would put themselves into that position... And I think it's pretty clear that Trump brushed shoulders with Nazis.
I think it's important to recognize how we got to the point where we are now. Infantilism is a big component in far anything communities, but the internet has made it way worse in some cases
If you go to (excuse my outdated concepts of extremist communities) Parler to talk about LGBT in a positive manner you will get about the same amount of vitriol as if you went to r/FemaleDatingStrategy to call out misandry or if you went to a specific /pol/ thread to fight antisemitism.
I think the bottom line here is, vitriol is pretty much omnipresent among us. The difference between communities is how they run the ductwork to siphon it out of our daily conversations. That's where the discourse is formulated and fine-tuned to the specific needs of its members.
When you build bubble-like communities, you will get echo chambers that breed infantile subjects. If you allow people to call each other certain slurs, but not other ones, you will naturally optimize for resistate to the former. If you build a forum with usernames and perhaps even an upvote system, people will recognize and build up reputation bound to their names. If you make an Anonymous board, people won't care about reputation. These are just two options on a huge spectrum of possible alignments. Engagement-oriented platforms (by that I mostly mean social media and Reddit), are however a special case.
Maybe an anecdote makes more sense: A few years ago, in high school, I used to find joy in trolling. I felt especially at home on the imageboard that starts with four, but when the thread would scroll over the limit and plunge into oblivion I realized how little those three people that I made seethe actually mattered. To contrast that, on platforms that value engagement, it was and probably still is a lot easier to reply with something inane and watch the replies roll in. A single statement that would go into the archives mostly unnoticed instead made an impact on dozens if not hundreds of people. After getting out of my turbo edgy phase I realised that I hurt a pretty good amount of people in both cases, and it feels somewhat dishonest to believe that every single downvote, reply and slur hurled my way was born in infantilism.
What I'm trying to say is that when we increase the number of interactions, we as a byproduct also increase the number of "bad" interactions. When I talk to "bad" people with "bad" opinions, I try to recognize that even if they are 90% infantile garbage, the rest can come from honest pain and discontentment. But sometimes that's just being too charitable. People are hard.
> Infantilism is a big component in far anything communities, but the internet has made it way worse in some cases
I definitely agree with this. I've seen it in my own ideological development.
I'm about 40 years old now. I've labelled myself lots of things over the years: Republican, conservative, libertarian, Objectivist, Anarcho-Capitalist, and more. I still identify in some way with all of those, which makes sense because while my ideas and beliefs have been refined over the years, much of the foundation and all of the personal experiences that informed them haven't.
I stopped calling myself a Republican when I saw that most Republicans had strong beliefs that ran counter to mine. I've never cared who someone loves or how they live. I'm happy to live peacefully and respectfully with whomever is around me as long as they're happy to do the same. I've always been opposed to the unbound growth of government and particularly opposed to government violating its own rules in pursuit of a goal that happens to be "an exception". The people I knew who called themselves Republicans increasingly differed from me, in these areas and others, so I looked for a new (or perhaps "more specific") community.
Libertarians seemed to fit that mold for me, and that worked for a long time. That term became associated with the Libertarian Party for me. For a while the LP seemed to be making some progress. I was an ardent supporter of Ron Paul and would have loved to see him take the Presidency. He didn't, so I started to care more about building a solid foundation so the "next Ron Paul" could be better supported. That looked like it might work for a while, but ultimately the LP fell apart and was taken over by people who weren't there for the same reasons that I was.
Objectivism was a more well-defined label, and at first I agreed with almost all of it. I loved that it was so consistent! But over time I found more and more edge cases where it wasn't consistent at all, and I realized that the people I interacted with were more interested in what Ayn Rand said than they were about thinking critically about things. I came to see Objectivists as "Randists", and abandoned the label.
Anarcho-Capitalism was similar. It's consistent, I agree with the foundations... but the people who apply it to themselves began to feel more and more "shallow" to me. Most of them were self-described Ancaps because they saw it as edgy; most those that earnestly believed it have such a shallow understanding of the way social systems work that they expected to be able to throw out all government tomorrow morning and everything would work out great. I (think!) I know better - while I believe government in its current form is immoral and should ultimately be abolished, trying to do it in one fell swoop is a sure recipe for social and economic disaster. Historically that's always followed by a period of violence and the rise of authoritarianism. No thanks.
These days my views are pretty much just my own, and I don't strongly identify with any label that I know of. My username is sorta tongue in cheek, even - I've seen it used as a slur for ancaps in the past, and it was mildly amusing to me, so I adopted it.
TL;DR: I think I've grown as a person to the point that I know my beliefs change over time, allow for the idea that I could be totally wrong, and am really just looking for a way to leave in peace and harmony with those around me. If I can find common ground with them and work together to move toward our shared goals - awesome. If not, that's OK too. I'm happy continuing to ignore the things I can't change.
I think that it's more the authoritarian movements that are especially immature and of course that's orthogonal to left/right classifications.
As a lefty myself, I find that right/capitalist politics to remind me of the toddler stage when kids are claiming things to be their own ("mine!") and exaggerating all of their accomplishments (e.g. Trumpism). Lefties tend to have more of a notion of sharing and trying to be emphatic with others, but there's certainly a breed of self-righteous, angry lefties too (c.f. Linus Torvalds' angry outbursts).
Edit: Another thought - is the infantilism better associated with populism? i.e. to appeal to a large demographic, it's best to keep slogans simple (e.g. "Get Brexit Done" from the UK Tories) and having simple ideas that can appeal to people despite the ideas not actually being practical (e.g. "Eat the rich")
I feel that "Eat the rich" reaction is simply an outcome of when people realize that they are in fact being exploited. Many were feeling similar in USSR. "Who does not rob the state, robs his own family" was a pretty popular slogan back in those days.
About the "immaturity", I don't have a good grasp of what it's supposed to mean. Maybe we should stop using it altogether (outside of biology) and concentrate on specific skills.
> About the "immaturity", I don't have a good grasp of what it's supposed to mean.
I interpret it as an infantile reaction to when events don't go your way. A classic example here in the UK is Boris Johnson's reaction to the just released "Partygate" report. A mature reaction to criticism would be to either dispute it if it's inaccurate or to acknowledge your own shortcomings otherwise. His reaction is more akin to a tantrum though that could be related to his narcissism.
Nowadays, I'm thinking that a lot of modern politics are becoming like a scene from Lord of the Flies.
(I wonder if climate catastrophes will make "Eat the rich" a popular slogan)
I find the only predicting factor in which policies the right or left will adopt to be what sort of parent would implement them- the right wing want the state to be a father, the left want it to be a mother.
By that lens, it makes total sense that the more seriously one takes the right-left polarity, the more one needs a parental figure!
Traditional gender roles seem like a reasonable proxy for political party in the US.
As of 2019, women tended to identify as Democrats (56%) much more often than as Republican (38%). Men identified as Republican more frequently (50%) than Democrat (42%).
I'd call that a proxy for what kind of parent you prefer your state to be, but it's probably complex enough that you could just as well start the feedback loop at gender role and work out from there.
