>A political hobbyist is someone who engages in politics a lot, that is they spend a lot of time thinking about politics, worrying about politics. But all the ways that they do politics are really for themselves, for their intellectual stimulation, for their emotional needs. They are the people who obsessively follow the news, maybe take a token action like signing an online petition, worry a lot, know a lot of facts, but actually, none of their time amounts to building power for the things that they care about.
maybe this isn't very true of people who are very sure of their opinion online, all the fucking time, but for myself, i engage in online politics all the time because i keep changing and refining my opinions. i mean sure, doing some good and connecting with my community, i kinda do that already!
but i'm very afraid of doing actual political work because i'm just not that sure about my political opinions.
True, the average leftist hates NGOs, but I have known leftists who've gone into left-*leaning* NGOs to my own surprise.
What I'm thinking of here is the way that things like the Sunrise Movement, GLAAD, and others similar to this - this is the class I was trying to get at with "Progressive NGOs". I've seen this kind of thing happen particularly with a lot of youth climate stuff as well.
Texeira was on this point as well - I'm interpreting the people causing the dysfunction here as either leftists or heavily influenced by leftists they're friends with.
"1. Internal Dysfunction. The new generation of activists coming into these organizations tends to see internal hierarchies as reflecting their radical critique of society as a whole as a system that oppresses all “marginalized” groups: black, Hispanic, anybody nonwhite, female, gay, trans, indigenous, colonized, etc. Therefore, these internal hierarchies are by definition unjust and must be struggled against with little regard to what function these hierarchies might actually serve.
Needless to say, this plays havoc with an organization’s ability to run a merit- and efficiency-based internal system, since so many “diversity” boxes have to be checked to do practically anything. And the need to placate staff demands and smooth over the endless conflicts this produces leads to a stunning misallocation of time and internal resources. The resulting inefficiencies can virtually paralyze an organization. Said one former executive director of a progressive organization quoted by Grim: “My last nine months, I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife”. Said another current executive director: “I’m now at a point where the first thing I wonder about a job applicant is, ‘How likely is this person to blow up my organization from the inside?”"
Other types of NGOs obviously have nothing to fear from leftists, but I maintain that there's been very clear signs of certain types of online discourse declaring some kind of victory by just making it into the NGOs and importing online conclusions into them. My biggest example is the pride flag update and then the descent into full Mogai-ism that the 2020 Pride stuff pursued, which was as online as it gets (and not something universally supported by leftists either). Same with the sudden victory for people saying "Queer should be the umbrella term again", which had not actually been settled, but basically seemed to get declared by NGOs and embraced by the people who were on that side of the argument and all opposition just got quietly steamrolled.
And likewise, I've always maintained that there's a degree to which progressive and leftist social spheres overlap, that causes progressives to end up taking on leftist positions and attitudes on social positions - in fact, it's basically the topic of my Defund The Police post, so that's a mechanism I think exists on progressive NGOs as well, in not just that dimension but in all kinds of other dimensions. I'm going to start taking to calling this "Social Leftism" probably because I don't have a better phrase even though that one sucks too.
Or do you think that the progressive NGOs also manage to resist falling prey to this? To be clear, proggy NGOs are all I had in mind with that, but do you think I've gotten them totally wrong too?
cool post.
>A political hobbyist is someone who engages in politics a lot, that is they spend a lot of time thinking about politics, worrying about politics. But all the ways that they do politics are really for themselves, for their intellectual stimulation, for their emotional needs. They are the people who obsessively follow the news, maybe take a token action like signing an online petition, worry a lot, know a lot of facts, but actually, none of their time amounts to building power for the things that they care about.
maybe this isn't very true of people who are very sure of their opinion online, all the fucking time, but for myself, i engage in online politics all the time because i keep changing and refining my opinions. i mean sure, doing some good and connecting with my community, i kinda do that already!
but i'm very afraid of doing actual political work because i'm just not that sure about my political opinions.
so i keep on with my socratic grilling.
Nice to see your insights, though I wish it was under better circumstances.
Men don’t talk about women amongst themselves, period.
What? Men definitely talk about women.
True, the average leftist hates NGOs, but I have known leftists who've gone into left-*leaning* NGOs to my own surprise.
What I'm thinking of here is the way that things like the Sunrise Movement, GLAAD, and others similar to this - this is the class I was trying to get at with "Progressive NGOs". I've seen this kind of thing happen particularly with a lot of youth climate stuff as well.
Texeira was on this point as well - I'm interpreting the people causing the dysfunction here as either leftists or heavily influenced by leftists they're friends with.
"1. Internal Dysfunction. The new generation of activists coming into these organizations tends to see internal hierarchies as reflecting their radical critique of society as a whole as a system that oppresses all “marginalized” groups: black, Hispanic, anybody nonwhite, female, gay, trans, indigenous, colonized, etc. Therefore, these internal hierarchies are by definition unjust and must be struggled against with little regard to what function these hierarchies might actually serve.
Needless to say, this plays havoc with an organization’s ability to run a merit- and efficiency-based internal system, since so many “diversity” boxes have to be checked to do practically anything. And the need to placate staff demands and smooth over the endless conflicts this produces leads to a stunning misallocation of time and internal resources. The resulting inefficiencies can virtually paralyze an organization. Said one former executive director of a progressive organization quoted by Grim: “My last nine months, I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife”. Said another current executive director: “I’m now at a point where the first thing I wonder about a job applicant is, ‘How likely is this person to blow up my organization from the inside?”"
(Source: https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/the-democrats-progressive-organization)
Other types of NGOs obviously have nothing to fear from leftists, but I maintain that there's been very clear signs of certain types of online discourse declaring some kind of victory by just making it into the NGOs and importing online conclusions into them. My biggest example is the pride flag update and then the descent into full Mogai-ism that the 2020 Pride stuff pursued, which was as online as it gets (and not something universally supported by leftists either). Same with the sudden victory for people saying "Queer should be the umbrella term again", which had not actually been settled, but basically seemed to get declared by NGOs and embraced by the people who were on that side of the argument and all opposition just got quietly steamrolled.
And likewise, I've always maintained that there's a degree to which progressive and leftist social spheres overlap, that causes progressives to end up taking on leftist positions and attitudes on social positions - in fact, it's basically the topic of my Defund The Police post, so that's a mechanism I think exists on progressive NGOs as well, in not just that dimension but in all kinds of other dimensions. I'm going to start taking to calling this "Social Leftism" probably because I don't have a better phrase even though that one sucks too.
Or do you think that the progressive NGOs also manage to resist falling prey to this? To be clear, proggy NGOs are all I had in mind with that, but do you think I've gotten them totally wrong too?