This is a tangent but I came across some small-time politics streamer recently. They were trash-tier, probably SocDem or Destiny-esque (or maybe of the same calibre of a Vaush orbiter like Demon Mama.)

Whatever the case, they were doing the typical railing against tankies and shit.

But the things that really stuck in my craw about this streamer were:

• They did some postgrad degree in politics and they were constantly waving this qualification around as if it made them immune from dogshit takes on politics and that it made them the smartest person in the room.

• They referred to anarchists as “fellow travellers of the left”. MFer, do you realise that anarchism is older than Marxism and it’s probably older than whatever bullshit pseudo-left ideology you cling to is??

• They accused an anarchist of being, I shit you not, antisemitic and of “thinking like a fascist” because they said that anarchism cannot be achieved under the current circumstances due to outside imperialist forces that will destroy an anarchist revolution. There was zero mention of anything to do with Jewish people or coded antisemitic terms like “cabal” or “lizard people” or anything of the sort.

• They claimed that Marxism is outdated because these days everyone is a mixture of bourgeoisie and proletarian.

Imo SocDems are some of the worst people to deal with on the political spectrum outside of the part that is circa-fascist. Most people will listen at least a little bit. Most people aren’t utterly convinced of the fact that they have achieved a level of moral, political, and historical enlightenment that borders on apotheosis. In my experience, SocDems almost invariably tend to have this towering superiority complex that means anything that advances their political objectives is justified and that they can claim a monopoly on everything.

As an example here, I recently had an exchange with a reactionary who was spouting anti-Marx nonsense. They said that Marx was disproven because his predictions were wrong. I asked for an example of a prediction that Marx made. They said “that socialism can be achieved through evolutionary means” (lol). I responded telling them that the first page of chapter one of The Communist Manifesto completely debunks this fallacious claim they made.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

They shut the fuck up because they got called out in the most embarrassing way possible, as they rightly should have. But when I told this streamer SocDem that the terms bourgeoisie and proletarian are mutually-exclusive and that they should be embarrassed by their lack of understanding of basic definitions of these terms, did they shut the fuck up? Did they ask why I thought that I was in the right? Did they go and check? Nope! They just doubled down on it and started calling me an idiot because they knew that their political insight is both unsurpassed and infallible.

Of course there’s always going to be people from any political persuasion that are really arrogant and that believe their politics is the only good one but for some reason it’s always the SocDems who are utterly intransigent and imperious in their beliefs. I’ve legitimately had more fruitful exchanges with Jordan Peterson fans on the reality of Bill C-16 than have ever had with SocDems about anything.

I can almost guarantee you what sort of response a SocDem would say to hearing that I find it easier to have a genuine discussion with some Jordan Peterson fans than I do any of them. They would be incensed at the mere suggestion that they would be compared unfavourably to an inferior group such as Petersonites and they’d attempt to gaslight me by saying that this experience is indicative of the fact that my values are more closely aligned to Peterson fans than they are to the “real” left because of course SocDems cannot fail, they can only be failed.