VickyCaramel wrote: ↑
I have encountered absolutely bitter hatred from the left while arguing for Brexit, far worse than I ever got when arguing against America's Religious Right. But I never knew they brainwashed the left into feelings of disgust and revulsion. You are going to have to explain yourself, because I am having visions of you being captured during the Korean war.
Oh yes, I can assure you that many white people on the Left are so conditioned to self-hatred as to have a feeling of disgust when they see images like this. Even at best, it's a
laughable image. Think of Merkel's instant moue of disgust when she was handed the German flag - that sort of encapsulates the feeling. Yes, there was probably some calculation about how "nationalistic" it would look if she waved the flag, but the reaction itself you can see is instant and visceral.
It's the conditioned association of that kind of image with what it's supposed to lead to that causes the feeling of disgust. The nuclear family is
supposed to lead to bad things, wives who look forward to this lifestyle are "Stepford Wives", the husband in this scenario is no doubt molesting his daughter, the cute little boy will grow up to be a misogynist, anti-Semitic little thug and bully. The neatness and orderliness of their lot must necessarily be a sign of neurosis, covering a deeply sadistic/masochistic relationship of authority and submission. They
look happy but really underneath it all they're seething bundles of hatred for other races, for minorities. Etc., etc., etc.
I know it's insane, and yes it's really really bad that lots of people think that way; but don't blame me, that's how it is: images of "straight" white family health and happiness automatically have a cloud of suspicion and are at best laughable, at worst disgusting.
And it's precisely by signalling, in a thousand small ways, that you have this general sort of feeling of discomfort with what the mainstream would consider good and aspire to, that you pass as someone of the (hard) Left, that you have the "ant smell" of someone on the Left.
And this is why the natural prey of Leftist ideology is smart children of dysfunctional families. Because sure, the family thing
doesn't always work out, and sometimes you'll have (e.g.) a nerdy rationalist kid growing up in a straightlaced Christian home with overly strict parents who hate each other and don't understand the kid - that type of thing. So obviously to a kid like that, the whole family thing isn't as
prima facie nice an aspiration as it is to most normal people. And that's the hook that makes it plausible that their experience, rather than being the odd one out, is standard. (As you might guess, this is semi-autobiographical :) )
To be more precise about it, this is the feeling for a goodly portion of the Left, which is to say, not the "Quaker" strain of the Left derived from liberalism and from the general idea of ameliorating the human lot, but the "Puritan" strain of the Left that comes from a feeling of
disgust with and anger about, exploitation. This is how Leftists who are "high in disgust" (in the Big 5 psychological sense) feel. Or to be even more precise, this is the character trait that the type of ideology they're attracted by
plays on.
And it all basically comes from a cluster of texts from the Frankfurt School (and similar), mainly the 1950's study
The Authoritarian Personality. In that study, which was based on questionnaires, responses from normal white Christian families, in which (among many other similar twistings of reality) children who expressed satisfaction with their family and love of their parents, were pathologized, using cod Freudianism, as "in denial," and children who expressed suspicion of their family, or hostility to their parents, were praised as being "honest" and seeing clearly. Another reversal of the truth is that such families are "atomized", separate from other families in little boxes, all made out of ticky-tacky - when actually the opposite is the truth, such families tend to be most engaged with their communities.
And
The Authoritarian Personality, despite several high-level debunkings over the years, is still the main prism through which the standard European/American family is seen by politically committed social psychology - which informs the education systems of the West. But it's also bled through to the entertainment industry, for example in the way movies are made about relationships and nuclear families, which are generally viewed with a jaundiced eye (consider the purport of a film title like "Terms of Engagement"), underneath the layer of cynical pandering to starry-eyed romanticism. (But the latter isn't necessary in art-house movies, so there you tend to see the full horrorshow of psychological damage that the white European family form is believed to lead to - unless very carefully hedged about and made "progressive.")