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Is the Left Wing more truthful than the Right Wing, and if so, why?

Ohh dear, this is going to get quite dreary with these leftwingers with their deadly rapier-like wit brilliantly dissecting their enemy with a mere flip of their wrist with a devastating jibe. it's going to be endless boredom from now on isn't it.
 
Cloo said:
I have been pondering this - after seeing a few examples of RW people on Twitter telling on themselves a bit about 'Hey, why don't we hear about left wing stuff being corrected by fact checkers' or 'It's really annoying arguing with the left wing because they use facts', I don't want to be all 'Ah the Left are wonderous and wise and honest....' but at the same time we do seem to make a whole less shit up/spread fewer baseless lies than the Right. Why might that be?

I can think of a few times LW things that aren't true have been spread - one was time people were saying Trump was only banning travel to middle Eastern countries he didn't do business in, another time a quote that I was satirical was attributed to Jacob Rees Mogg (but it says something that it seemed plausible!), but I don't think I've ever seen a trend to the wild sort of lie spreading that comes from the right. And I don't think an untruth spread on the Left has ever done actual harm to someone on the right, unlike vice versa.

I don't think it's because the Left are so marvellous - to be honest it makes me want to scream how many on the Left seem to devote their energies to doing down their own side, but again, that's perhaps related to the reason we don't seem to spread bullshit about the Right - we want to be truthful, even to the points of being 'warts and all' about 'our side' even to its discredit.

There is also the fact that the Right does a lot of genuinely awful things, so we don't really have to make it up or exaggerate make it sound bad? Whereas the Right likes to frame harmless things, like kids getting read a nice story by a drag queen, in some utter bullshit to make it sound bad. Sorry, this is kind of rambling, but interested what people think.
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'Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction'.

Topping that lie is impossible I think. The bullshit spouted by Trump was kindergarten stuff compared to the lie told by Blair and Campbell, who should still be in jail.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I don't really have answers.

Mugabe was the co-leader of a noble cause. He led the fight against oppression and won. But by winning in that way, he was immediately placed in control of the means to violence. And then made it all about him.

Cuba. Another worthy cause. But Castro in power abused that power. Because he could. Made it all about him.

French Revolution. The Reign of Terror followed by Napoleon stepping in to restore order. And making it all about him.

Stalin. Made it all about him.

I'd love to see counterexamples. Revolutions in which tyranny is overthrown violently and that doesn't lead to a new form of tyranny of some flavour or another.
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Are there any? Life under the Bolsheviks was no better for the Russian poor than it was under the Czar.
 
Sasaferrato said:
Are there any? Life under the Bolsheviks was no better for the Russian poor than it was under the Czar.
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It really depends what criteria you are using. Life in Cuba under Castro was measurably better in many ways for a lot of people than life under Batista. But the Cuban Revolution did not bring freedom. I guess that would be my question. Are there examples of violent revolutions that have led to genuine freedom?

When I consider the examples I can think of, the more peaceful the revolution is, the better its chance of achieving freedom as its outcome. But is the peaceful overthrow of tyrants (like Batista) always realistically possible?
 
littlebabyjesus said:
It really depends what criteria you are using. Life in Cuba under Castro was measurably better in many ways for a lot of people than life under Batista. But the Cuban Revolution did not bring freedom. I guess that would be my question. Are there examples of violent revolutions that have led to genuine freedom?

When I consider the examples I can think of, the more peaceful the revolution is, the better its chance of achieving freedom as its outcome. But is the peaceful overthrow of tyrants (like Batista) always realistically possible?
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I can't think of any examples of real freedom that lasted, so either we accept that freedom is impossible or we accept that so far no revolution (or any other political change for that matter) has lead to that.
 
emanymton said:
I can't think of any examples of real freedom that lasted, so either we accept that freedom is impossible or we accept that so far no revolution (or any other political change for that matter) has lead to that.
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Lots of either wholly or largely peaceful revolutions have led to very marked and lasting changes in levels of freedom. Portugal, Czechoslovakia, South Africa.

I guess you can argue over whether or not all of these transitions really were revolutions, but I think Portugal is quite a clear-cut case.
 
planetgeli said:
The Zapatista uprising has helped establish some autonomous zones within areas where they are strong. No police, no government officials, self-governance, own schools.

Didn't quite bring down neo-liberalism or the patriarchy but they've had a better go than most.
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That's a good shout.

Sadly the Sandinistas in Nicaragua are another example of revolution gone wrong. Whenever it becomes personified by an individual, in this case Ortega, it is doomed.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Lots of either wholly or largely peaceful revolutions have led to very marked and lasting changes in levels of freedom. Portugal, Czechoslovakia, South Africa.

I guess you can argue over whether or not all of these transitions really were revolutions, but I think Portugal is quite a clear-cut case.
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Yes, hence why I said real freedom, as there are different levels of freedom, I don't think there is any country that is free but some are closer than others.
 
emanymton said:
Yes, hence why I said real freedom, as there are different levels of freedom, I don't think there is any country that is free but some are closer than others.
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I'm not so ambitious. Just a marked change in level of freedom will do me. Portugal post-1974 was, and is, markedly more free than it was in the decades before it.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I'm not so ambitious. Just a marked change in level of freedom will do me. Portugal post-1974 was, and is, markedly more free than it was in the decades before it.
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I am getting less ambitious too, hell I'll settle for things just not getting worse for a few years at the moment.
 
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Sasaferrato said:
Yep, that too.
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Communist countries that used to use the word “Democratic” in their official title. This usually happened when one country was divided into two as with Germany, Korea and Vietnam. As soon as Vietnam came Completely under Communist Party rule it changed its name to “Socialist republic" gone was the "Democratic" bit. Communist like to grab the word “Democratic” because it's popular and Not because they believe in it and they want to get it before the Democratic side does.
 
Sasaferrato said:
Yep, that too.
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Communist political parties that change their name to more moderate sounding titles In order to gain support:
There are numerous examples of Marxist-Leninist Parties changing their names to more nice sounding names like "socialist" later on they use Social Democrats some have tried to change their name to Democratic and more recently they've tried to hijack the green movement.

en.wikipedia.org

Green Left (Denmark) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Red–Green Alliance (Denmark) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

GroenLinks - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org

Socialist Party (Netherlands) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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