There are some Leftist ideas that are not only poor-as-applied but actually work much better when they are reversed or, depending on point of view, actually are reversals of saner ideas. (Not to be confused with reversing the accusation, even if an overlap is often present.)
For instance, in [1], I reversed the idea of “relative poverty” by introducing “relative wealth”. Here I do not only abstain from the fiction that someone who has enough money to develop an obesity problem would be poor in any real sense, but also point out that past kings, rich traders, whatnot, who lacked access to modern technology, conveniences, healthcare, etc., might not have been in so good a position as the naive might think. They were, in a manner of speaking, “relatively wealthy” through having more wealth than, say, a random serf, while having to forgo much that is considered an “everyday” thing today—no matter how many more times wealthier they were than that random serf.
[1] also contained an excursion to briefly introduce the more general idea of the current page and a first example (intersectionality). Later, I wished to write something about the anti-ICE nativity scene (cf. below), and created this page in combination with a move of the (slightly adapted) contents of that excursion here. Further contents have followed over time, and further yet might follow, but I do not intended this page as an even remotely complete catalogue of Leftist ideas that do or might work better when reversed.
Intersectionality was originally intended to imply that someone who simultaneously belonged to more than one group-for-which-the-Left-has-a-grievance-agenda would have been hit worse by this-and-that than someone who only belonged to one such group. This is, at least in the modern West, rarely a fruitful perspective. However, the reverse can be, in that the idea of a majority juxtaposed with various minorities is usually flawed in a so heterogeneous society as the U.S. (and most of the modern Western world, in general—and might fail in many more homogeneous societies). The reason? An intersection of group belongings that moves everyone to a minority position. Even such a limited intersection as “White male” will make someone a minority in the U.S. (Even if we assume that men and women are 50–50. In reality, there are more women than men, making even “male” a minority—if a very large minority.) Throw in a few other factors, e.g. concerning sexuality, family situation, and religious beliefs, and the minority turns quite small in short order. This is the more notable, as it is virtually impossible to say what group belongings are or are not important to the various involved parties in a given situation. (For instance, one prospective employer might be biased because of a religious agreement or disagreement, another because of a Southerner–Yankee or Irish–English divide, yet another because of who went to what college, etc. For instance, being White might be next to irrelevant to someone’s own “identity” or political preferences, while being a father and a railway aficionado might be central.)
In other settings, however, the Leftist version might have had considerable value, say, in that a Black woman might have seen an accumulation of career hurdles in 1925 that considerably exceeded those of being Black resp. a woman taken alone. In 2025, the opposite applies, as various “diversity” and “affirmative action” pushing gives the same Black woman, transplanted in time, an accumulation of advantages. (Much contrary to Leftist reality distortion—and going back several decades.) To boot, the 2025 U.S. society is far more heterogeneous than in 1925 (at least, when looking at the pushed-by-the-Left criteria), which makes the above remarks the more important.
In the now, a worse problem is that the original intention has become lost in favor of identity politics, de-individualization, and over-focus on groups, where some intersection of race, sex, sexuality, and other pushed-by-the-Left criteria should effectively define who someone is, while his individual characteristics, interests, life choices, etc., are deemed irrelevant.
In news reporting in December 2025 I encountered a very disturbing iteme:
A Massachusetts Catholic church is sparking controversy with its Nativity scene that features an empty manger where baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph should be with a sign that says ‘ICE was here.’
This idiocy is motivated, going by the remainder of the contents, by ideas like trying to portray how Jesus would fare if born today.
Aside from the trifle that ICE has neither jurisdiction in areas where Jesus was born, lived, and died, nor an interest in who lives in, immigrates to, or emigrates from them:
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph all appear to have been legal residents of the Roman Empire and, in fact, were in specifically Bethlehem (where the nativity took place) by an imperial command. More, their stay in Bethlehem was both likely to be unwelcome to them and intended to be temporary. The more so considering the risk that Mary would give birth during the journey (as she, indeed, did), with all the complications that this could bring. Joseph, as head of the family, was in fact going out of his way (both literally and metaphorically) to obey a legal obligation. The agenda of ICE would, then, not apply to the three—ICE is geared at removing illegal aliens and preferentially criminal illegal aliens at that.
To boot, the reason for travel was a census, which gathers the type of information that the U.S. Democrats wants to prevent ICE from using and the participation in which could have been troublesome for a modern illegal alien. Chances are that Joseph would not have participated, had the scenario been transplanted to the modern U.S. and had he actually been a typical modern illegal alien.
But what happened next in the traditional narrative? Herod proceeded to slaughter all male children below the age of two—regardless of other factors, like legality of residence. How does ICE compare to that? Even if an ICE equivalent had been after Jesus as a hypothetical illegal alien, he would at most have been deported—in the actual Biblical scenario, his very life was at stake. How did Jesus avoid that fate? The family escaped into Egypt, implying that the three actually did leave the country. That the manger (literally or metaphorically) was not empty was a matter of timing—not the absence of ICE.
I say “legal residents of the Roman Empire”, because a more local perspective becomes tricky, as (a) the family lived in Galilee (specifically, Nazareth) but had now traveled to Judea, (b) both Galilee and Judea were part of a greater Herodian kingdom at the time. No matter how the issue is turned and twisted, however, do we land in anything ICE relevant. A reasonable analogy might be an alternate reality where the area of the current U.S. was governed by a British viceroy, and someone went from New York to New Jersey on legitimate, temporary, and government-ordered business—not, in our reality, e.g. a Columbian illegally sneaking into Texas to distribute cocaine as a long-term resident.
While Jesus’s status, as a newborn child, is tricky to judge, there is no reason to assume that he would have been in trouble given his parents’ status. Moreover, if the U.S. system of “born in the U.S.; ergo, U.S. citizen” had been applied, m.m., to Judea, he would have been safe anyway. (Criteria for being a Roman citizen were far stricter and related more to the city of Rome than to the Roman Empire.)
The historicity of this-and-that is doubted, including the modalities of the census and whether Jesus actually was born in Bethlehem and/or in the type of stable often used for nativity scenes. For the current text, such doubts are mostly irrelevant, because the distorted nativity scene must be viewed in a context of Biblical narrative and traditional depictions. (And I write as were the narrative true, on a “for the sake of argument” basis. Note that the four Gospels do not all contain all claims relevant to discussions of Jesus. Matthew might be most relevant for sub-topics around the very early days of Jesus.)
Replace that idiotic sign with a sign that says “Hamas was here”.
Alternatively, look at the tail-end of the life of Jesus as depicted in the Bible and what good (if metaphorical) match it makes with current Leftist approaches—crucified for criticizing a self-important establishment and failing to adhere to a religious (then) resp. quasi-religious ideological (now) orthodoxy.
Other variations on the same theme could include an adult Jesus being consistently shouted down when he tried to speak or a teenage Jesus being denied acceptance to a college in favor of a less qualified Black lesbian woman.
Certainly, it is the Democrats, not the Republicans, who have an anti-Jew problem in their ranks.
The Left also often has a paradoxical take on Jews (against) vs. other minority groups, including the Hispanics (in favor) often relevant to ICE. This even when comparing Jews who are law-abiding and otherwise “good citizens” with illegal aliens, criminal aliens, and criminal illegal aliens. (And keep in mind that ICE is geared at these groups—in particular, criminal illegal aliens.)
While the individual variation is enormous, and while no such opinions can automatically be ascribed to any given Leftist merely by dint of being Leftist, they are disturbingly common and appear to be united in many individual Leftists, maybe as a side-effect of a flawed oppressor–oppressed thinking where successful groups ipso facto are oppressors and unsuccessful ones oppressed. (As opposed to the slightly more understandable situation where disjunct groups of Leftists are against Jews respectively favor Hispanics.)
An abortion angle is also tempting based on U.S. political controversies; however, it fails on the point that Mary had received revelation and would, presumably, have been very unlikely to seek or consent to an abortion—even assuming that it would have worked in this specific case. From a less political and more the-world-has-changed point of view, the question of contraceptives could be more reasonable, but, again, would have been unlikely to work in this specific case. (But might apply to many historical humans, be they good or evil, important to the world at large or only to their near-and-dear.)
A less U.S.-centric alternative angle, with an overlap with Hamas and/or other Islamists, is honor killings. What, e.g., if Mary’s parents had summarily had her stoned? (With variations, including a Joseph who did not believe in claims around a divine conception and assumed that she had “known” another man, causing him to grow wrathful and smite her mightily.)
A common claim in Feminist hate propaganda is that we would live in a society dominated by an alleged “rape culture”—a term usually used with such vagueness that it becomes borderline pointless. In as far as a definition or explanation is attempted, the result tends to be either something which simply does not apply to the real world or something that is so trite as to, again, be pointless—or, of course, a mixture of the two. To boot, the term usually has nothing to do with rape. Instead, we have yet another case of Feminists using “rape” as a trick for emotional and other manipulation.
Generally, the word “rape” is extremely problematic in Feminist propaganda, e.g. in that there are great attempts to weaken the definition to the trivial to enable claims of absurd numbers of rapes while each such case is treated as a crime worse than murder and/or is used to evoke images of a young woman dragged into the woods to be violated at knife-point.
The type of grossly misnamed “consent” laws that have been imposed in e.g. Sweden and have equivalents in many U.S. colleges are a great example of such trivialization: Actual consent is no longer enough, but repeated affirmation (for want of a better word) is required if such laws are taken at their face value. At an extreme, some Feminists have pushed the line that if a woman consents today and changes her mind tomorrow (!) she has been raped. (In a small mercy, I am not aware of any law, or even just college, that tries to enforce such insanity, notwithstanding that the trend towards a presumption of guilt/a “guilty until proven innocent” attitude can have a very similar effect.)
Even more generally, such mixtures of vagueness, lack of applicability to the real world, triteness, whatnot, are a Feminist (and/or woke and/or Leftist) staple, as with e.g. the “Patriarchy”.
Not only is this idea of “rape culture” an insanity in light of the extremely privileged position of modern Western women, but a much stronger case can be made for a reverse “castration culture”. (Where I use the dramatic name in direct answer to the claims of “rape culture”.) Consider e.g.:
Ideas around privilege come with similar problems, be it “male privilege”, “White privilege”, or some other variation on the same theme. I have written about similar topics in e.g. [2].
Society, workplaces, academia, whatnot are increasingly changing from following what, in some sense, can be viewed as male values and approaches to female ones and, worse, these male values and approaches are increasingly condemned and looked down upon, often with hate rhetoric and complete non sequiturs like “toxic masculinity” and “White supremacy”.
Consider how excellence and competitiveness, free speech and attempts to find the truth, etc. are replaced with affirmative action, compliance, consensus-for-the-sake-of-consensus, inoffensiveness as an alleged virtue, etc. On a big-picture level (and strongly over-lapping with Leftism in general), much goes back to a rejection of equality of outcome in favor of equality of outcome. Indeed, that which is forced out includes much of what has brought success to humanity and/or which is objectively good.
The idea of “toxic masculinity” is particularly problematic (and might result in a separate entry on this page at a later time). Not only is it yet another case of hate rhetoric—but “toxic femininity” appears to be much more prevalent. The clear majority of toxic humans that I have ever encountered, be it in my private or professional life, in politics, or other settings, have been women—and toxicity seems to be much more natural to women.
Boyhood has been particularly harshly hit, with school being a major source of problems. In addition to problems similar to those of the previous item (but modified for age bracket), natural boyish behaviors have been seen as problems for decades, resulting in Ritalin abuse and other evils, while boys are forced to contend with an unproductive school geared strongly at girls—and where they are mostly surrounded by female teachers. (And often teachers who adhere to various far-Left ideologies, Feminism, wokeness, and similar.)
There are increasing restrictions on male sexuality, including the aforementioned horrifyingly misnamed consent laws (which, while nominally independent of the sex of the potential accuser and accused, are strongly geared against men); including that “porn for men” is viewed as somehow morally defunct, as “oppressive” of women, or similar, while “porn for women” is perfectly accepted, sometimes even lauded as, say, “liberative” or “sex positive”; and including that men are increasingly put in an impossible position in the dating world.
To expand on the last, note e.g. how an unwelcome-to-the-woman approach, even as a one-time event, can be viewed as sexual harassment and (in an office setting) bring about HR problems, while a man who fails to approach when the approach was wanted is instead viewed negatively for failing to approach. Ditto how even an innocent compliment, which would have been welcomed a few decades ago, can lead to harassment charges if it lands with a woman with the wrong mentality—and who would have been correctly viewed as the nutcase that she is those few decades ago. Ditto the impossible demands of knowing whether a woman (literally or metaphorically) will be offended because that patriarchal creep dared open a door for her or because that rube with no manners failed to open the same door. Etc.
A particular sub-issue is various types of “strict liability”, which can apply in some jurisdictions, and not only limit men artificially but also illustrate how e.g. laws can be reversed into the opposite of what they reasonably should be. (While usually off-topic to this page, the underlying idea is very similar.) For instance, it is not uncommon that a man who impregnates a woman is held accountable for child support, with no way out—even should the blame for the pregnancy rest squarely on the woman, e.g. because she claimed to be on the pill when she was not or actually was but had been sloppy with taking it. Here, the opposite should apply: The woman should take full and sole responsibility for any and all pregnancies that were not planned with the consent of both parties. (Potentially, with different rules in a marriage.) Another frequent “strict liability” issue is underage sex, where a man risks going down for e.g. “statutory rape” for having sex with someone who dishonestly claimed to be of legal age and no matter how plausible that claim was—up to and including use of a fake id. (The more absurd as the limit for legal age varies greatly with jurisdiction.)
Further examples of “castration culture” can be found in various older writings on Feminism, notably in my category on Feminism and on my old Wordpress blog. The above listing is not even remotely complete.
In addition, there is a problem with what amounts to castrations in many cases of various trans-whatnots, many of whom are too young to give meaningful consent and many of whom change their minds later in life. This, however, is a problem different from the above, post-dating the hate rhetoric of “rape culture”, and mostly independent of Feminism.
Maybe the only quote attributed to Keynes that is commonly given (with some variations; here, re-quoted from Wikiquote on Keynese):
Capitalism is “the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds.”
Whether the claim actually is by Keynes appears to be a matter of some debate.
That Keynes is rarely quoted (despite being so influential on and so lionized by the Left) might in part be a matter of how heavy his prose is, in part of how his extensive writings and varying opinions can open the doors to find quotes in support of both sides of many issues—including pro-Capitalism and anti-Economics. (Cf. the linked-to page. Note that reservations about reading a quote out of context might be especially important with Keynes.)
Firstly, this is a caricature of what a typical believer in Capitalism actually thinks. I doubt that even Ayn Rand would have identified with that take. (And her protagonists were more likely to be noble than nasty.) Something like “the belief that allowing individuals to use their own work and wealth in free enterprise has the side-effect of creating a flowering society” might come closer to the truth—and does match empirical observations going back ages. (The point about “empirical observations” is important in that it reduces the room for accusations of naiveté, while, below, increasing it for Communism.)
Secondly, a reversal to claim that
Communism/Socialism/whatnot is “the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men will somehow be turned into virtue as soon as a system of Communism/Socialism/whatnot is established’.”
would be fairer—and through its patent faultiness reveals how doomed to failure Communism/Socialism/whatnot is. This, of course, is also borne out by empirical observations going back ages.
For brevity, I will speak only of “Communism” below. Similar claims apply more generally to various Leftist ideologies, however, if with differences in detail and the reservation that Communism is a harsher form of Leftism than e.g. Social-Democracy.
For symmetry reasons, it can be argued that it would be better to juxtapose Capitalism (and/or free markets) with some variation of the plan economy to avoid an apples–oranges comparison. However, while the issues of not understanding human nature are problematic with plan economies much more generally, they are worse with Communism and other more extended systems. A juxtaposition Libertarianism–Communism might be a way out, but the quote that is the starting point for this discussion does focus on Capitalism, which would make this very odd.
More generally, human nature is a major problem with any system for running an economy, a society, or similar. Capitalism does have problems relating to human nature, including that many will simply ignore the rules of fair play (e.g. by taking money for a product or a service and then delivering something inferior to what was promised) and that many will try to sabotage the mechanisms needed for the optimal functioning of a Capitalist system (e.g. by forming cartels to artificially reduce market forces for their own benefit). However, Capitalism is a system that still works reasonably-to-very well despite the existence of the “nastiest motives” and the “nastiest men”. Other systems tend to work less well, e.g. because handing a truly nasty man the power of a totalitarian government is far worse than handing him the power of a business.
An interesting sub-complication is that while the true power of a business is usually fairly limited, both in terms of what it can and can not do to a citizen/customer/whatnot and in terms of who can wield that power, the power of government is much more extensive. A low-level civil servant might be a gnat in the eyes of someone like Stalin, but can still exert immense power relative that citizen in a Communist dictatorship—often even in an alleged “liberal democracy”.
Another is the typical Leftist take that (a) Capitalism is inherently nasty and that any and all harmful misdevelopments within Capitalism (including cheating) would, in some sense, be the true nature of Capitalism, while (b) any and all harmful misdevelopments in Communism would go back to “was not real Communism”. This is a highly naive and/or intellectually dishonest take. Particular complications include a fundamental misunderstanding of what ideas are behind Capitalism and a failure to acknowledge that harmful misdevelopments are far more common with Communism—to the point that they, largely because of human nature, must be viewed as virtually inevitable.
The main difference between the two, however, appears on a more grass-roots level:
Capitalism presumes that if someone sees that those who work hard/smart/professionally/whatnot will build materially good lives for themselves, then he often will put in the work and build that life—and society as a whole will benefit. (I say “often” because different humans have different priorities, including that some might see more free time as relatively more important than material well-being, that some others might take an ascetic attitude, etc.)
Communism presumes that the citizenry will be filled with an urge to work for the common good, much like Boxer of “Animal Farm”, or like ants in an ant hill.
The former is strongly compatible with human nature; the latter is not. Notably, this is not limited to weakness of human nature, but also involves individual variation—Capitalism is far more suited for individual variation, and the individual choices/whatnot than accompanies it, than is Communism. Communism, indeed, ever and ever again, has to resort to force and coercion to make the citizens behave like they “should”.
In a next step, adherents of Communism do not take exposure to the predictable and repeated failure of Communism as a reason to question whether Communism can at all work. Instead, excuse-making begins, say, that counter-revolutionaries had been at work to subvert any chance at a utopia, that this particular incarnation of Communism had not been “true” Communism (but that next time, everything will magically work out), or that something had been “wrong” with the people and that the people was to blame.
To the last: Firstly, this is a good example of true victim blaming. (Something that might receive an entry on this page in its own right at a later date: Victim blaming is often invoked by the Left, in particular, Feminists, but usually applies more to the Left as the victimizing blamer than the blamed victim.) Secondly, there is a famous quote from the Federalist Papers that “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”, which, as men are not angels, preempts much faulty thinking on government and, by analogy, other areas of society, societal organization, etc. The preceding sentence, “But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?”, might be even more central, as it points to how it would be naive to assume that government would, by some stroke of magic, be free from all the limitations and problems with human nature. Likewise, I would say that if human nature had been sufficiently compatible with Communism that Communism (qua idealized society) would have worked, then Communism (qua political system) would not have been needed—and certainly not violent revolutions, violent suppression of dissent, censorship, whatnot.
(I quote from an online edition of Federalist 51e, where these quotes actually can be read in context. More generally, I very strongly recommend the investment of reading the Federalist Papers in full.)
In a twist, similar reversals are possible about Keynes teachings and/or his adherents beliefs, e.g. as “the astonishing belief that money in the hands of the government would work hard for the benefit of all, while money in the hands of the citizens would laze about in mattresses” or as “the astonishing belief that the government has great competence in any and all economic matters, while any and all business owner is a bumbling fool in matters of his own business”. (While I do not think too highly of Keynes, himself, it should be noted that many of his adherents are far, far worse. Many Keynes-invoking politicians might even use his teachings as a mere excuse to push the policies that they already want to push, as opposed to genuinely building their policies around his teachings.)
At least in Germany, the idea of a “false equivalency” is often invoked when any attempt, no matter how justified, is made to compare the evils of e.g. Communism with the evils of Nazism.
However:
Firstly, that this is a correct equivalency for most purposes is and should be a core insight. (Cf. a below, excursion with some links, and various other texts. Note that hardly any suggested equivalency is correct for all purposes.)
Secondly, the German Left tries very hard to impose a genuine false equivalency between Nazis and anything that the Left deems “Rightwing”—be it Conservatism, Libertarianism, criticism of migration policies, or, yikes!, nationalism. (Or whatever else fits the “Nazi!” accusation after some Procrustean work. Also note how often the U.S. Left has made claims in the “Nazi!” and “Hitler!” families against Republican presidents—by no means limited to Trump.)
It would then be far better to call the genuine false equivalencies “false equivalencies” and to acknowledge the truth of the legitimate equivalencies.
However, the Left is generally very prone to invoking other false equivalencies, often by blurring or ignoring critical distinctions. Here, too, it would be truly worthwhile to call false equivalencies “false equivalencies”.
Looking at the current U.S., e.g., we have false equivalencies like the walls of Trump and Berlin (critical distinction: the one is intended to keep unwanted foreign citizens out; the other was intended to serve as a prison wall to prevent the own citizens from leaving) or legal and illegal immigrants (with a tautological critical distinction).
Generally, the Left is very bad at discrimination (or, as case may have it, lack the intellectual honesty to acknowledge the results of discrimination).
Indeed, discrimination, it self, could be argued as a common victim of a failure to discriminate and make critical distinctions (e.g. between warranted and unwarranted discrimination), or even of false equivalencies.
A currently global-seeming problem is the equation of claims that the Left does not like with “hate”, “racism”, “sexism”, whatnot. (What applies, again after some Procrustean work, varies from case to case.) A very long-standing and global problem is misrepresentations around Capitalism and/or free markets, as e.g. with the Keynes quote discussed in the previous entry, which often manifests in false equivalencies, e.g. that Capitalism and greed would be the same. (This quote is arguably less of a false equivalency than a more general misunderstanding or -representation, but it is also in immediate proximity.)
While there is a legitimate “false equivalency” fallacy, and while some of the Leftist (!) attempts at equating A and B can be viewed as examples, the use criticized here does not meet the bar. More, for the better part, such uses appear to be deliberately dishonest rhetoric. In as far as they are not, they are extremely naive and/or commit a fallacy fallacy.
To explain why it is wrong to dismiss a claim of “False equivalency!!!” as a response to e.g. a Communist–Nazi comparison is tricky. How come? Because the invokers, in turn, do not explain why the equivalency would be faulty... (Or do so only by invoking claims that have no convincing value, e.g. through failing on one of the following list items, themselves would need to be supported by further argumentation, or are outright incorrect.)
However, some observations:
Such a near-consistent failure to explain is a strong sign in its own right.
Some might make a misjudgment in somewhat good faith based on the e.g. a comparison between Nazi-Germany and the DDR/GDR. However, this extremely German-centric perspective fails to consider the likes of the USSR and Communist China. To boot, it fails to consider factors like needs, circumstances, opportunities, whatnot, which can make a comparison misleading even when limited to the DDR—which had proven a sufficiently deep-seated contempt for human rights, human life, whatnot, that e.g. an extermination camp for those deemed sufficiently unwanted might very well have been created, had the stars happened to align in the wrong manner. (To which quite a few other problems of comparisons can be added, some of which are discussed in my lengthy series of texts on the Nazis from my Wordpress days, notably with regard to comparisons over time.
Some case could be made if the comparison was explicitly limited to the SED vs. the NSDAP, or some similar juxtaposition. However, I can recall no such comparison attempt where such reasoning would not backfire on the Left. For instance, a somewhat common sentiment seems to be that “the NSDAP was much worse than the SED; ergo, the AfD is much worse than Die Linke”. However, even if we accept the premise, the conclusion falls flat on its face: On the one hand, Die Linke is a re-branded version of the SED, the same party with a new name; on the other, AfD has no direct connection to the NSDAP, and the association with anything Nazi goes back to a small proportion of Neo-Nazis. On the one hand, Die Linke pushes far-Leftist policies that are broadly similar to those of the DDR; on the other, AfD’s policies are not significantly more similar to those of the NSDAP than many other parties. On the one hand, Die Linke has seen 35 years since the end of the DDR; on the other, even if we were to see an AfD–NSDAP connection, Nazi-Germany went to the grave 80 years ago.
This as of January 2026. I note that similar arguments go back as far as I can remember in Germany, well before specifically AfD became a political factor, and that the relative difference in time used to be even larger than it is today. (While I do not remember when I first encountered the argument, I did first arrive in Germany in 1997, a few days short of the 7th (!) anniversary of the German re-union and the end of the DDR as a separate entity.
From another angle, already those 35 years explain why nothing more than a “broadly similar” can be expected for Die Linke relative the SED. (The more so as there might be discrepancies between policies suggested while seeking power and those implemented if in power.) If we look at the traditionally two largest parties, CDU and SPD, we cannot expect more than “broadly similar” either, when we compare their respective “now” and “then” versions.
Some might fail to make a distinction between what they (!) consider good and evil opinions/goals/whatnot and fail to consider methods—but “evil is as evil does” and an evil act does not magically become good because it is committed by a Communist instead of a Nazi.
With some overlap with “evil is as evil does”, the appropriateness of the equivalency is shown by the great similarities in methods and attitudes—regardless of the motivation behind invoking “False equivalency!!!”. (This is explored to some degree in my text on political scales, the aforementioned series of texts from my Wordpress days, and likely some other texts too. Indeed, the core theme of that series is that the Nazis are best viewed as Leftwing.
Some take that obnoxious position that “X was not real Communism! You cannot judge Communism by X!”, while (a) ignoring the fact that Communism put into practice appear to always fail in a similar manner, discrediting the claim, and (b) silently assuming that any and all future cases of Nazism would be a re-run of the NSDAP.
The last is the more paradoxical as the single case allows for a much greater likelihood of significant variation upon a new attempt than the series of repetitions. Consider e.g. that even the NSDAP with Hitler might have been very different from without him, that lessons might have been drawn (a benefit of doubt ever and ever again extended to new incarnations of Communism), and that changing times might have brought changes in its own right (cf. above link and comments about time and changes).
Note that I do not claim that a new incarnation of Nazism would be substantially different. (It might or might not be.) The point is that the suggested Leftist argument hinges on poor thinking and double standards to such a degree that it cannot be taken seriously.
Beyond this, it is important to keep in mind that even less extreme versions of Leftism than Communism often causes great problems through exactly the types of errors that makes Communism and Nazism so problematic, even if they do not manifest to the same degree or only over time (as in part discussed in the aforementioned text on political scales). Ideas like “first they came” and “Wehret den Anfängen!” (see side-note) apply very much to large portions of the Left, but, paralleling the issue of “false equivalency”, are usually invoked by the German Left, with the implication that anything remotely “Rightwing”-seeming, by whatever definition used, has to be immediately stomped out—or ten years from now we will invade Poland and build concentration camps. (I forgo a separate entry for the time being.)
The phrase “Wehret den Anfängen!” amounts to roughly “Fight against the beginnings!”, based on the Latin “Principiis obsta!”. While it has some similarity in intent with English sayings like “a stitch in time saves nine”, the German saying is more often limited to matters of great perceived or claimed direness—and the use with exactly the implication “We must stomp out anything Rightwing!” is often heard. (The Latin version might be half-joking, as it arose as a suggestion to avoid unhappy love, in Ovid’s “Remedia Amoris”.)
Two similar, partially overlapping, partially representative, examples are affordability and sustainability.
A good example of overlap, and something of relevance to both, are a few earlier words on sustainable immigration. (I will not address this again in the continuation, but it is highly relevant to the likes of New York, which features repeatedly in the below discussion.)
The idea of “affordability” is very valid, but has recently (2025/2026) been abused to push paradoxical Leftist agendas, including as a help to elect Mamdani as mayor of New York. By any reasonable standard, however, affordability is a good reason to reject Leftist government/policies/whatnot. Much of this is explained in [1], including the importance of growth to remove poverty. Other factors yet include disabling of market forces and competition; price inflation; high taxes that (a) reduce disposable income, (b) reduce profitability at a give price level for businesses and, therefore, tends to drive prices up; excessive bureaucracy; and similar. The long-standing problems with housing costs in New York, e.g., are to a considerable part Left-induced (or politician-induced) through rent controls, troubles with getting the right permits in time, and similar, which cut into the supply of living space. A truly pervasive issue is energy prices, in light of the anti-energy policies of e.g. Biden, that do not only hit households directly through electricity/heating/gasoline/whatnot bills but also indirectly through higher manufacturing costs, higher costs to keep stores with light and heat, higher public transport costs, etc., that all affect the prices encountered for other products—and often in chains of causality, in that a grocery store might pay a larger energy bill and a higher bill for its products because the producers need energy too and the raw-material suppliers of the producers need energy, etc. And, of course, higher energy costs imply less growth.
A corresponding tail of “And, of course, [X] impl[y/ies] less growth.” can be applied to a great number of points in this entry. I will not make even remotely consistent mentions of growth below, but I do, again, emphasize the importance of growth and the contents of [1]. Also note more on the idea of “sustainable growth” below.
Poverty and (lacking) affordability are, of course, closely related, especially, through the idea of “purchasing power”. The combination also gives potential other takes on ideas like “relative [wealth/poverty]”: It does not matter how much we have and/or earn in nominal terms if this does not translate into real effects, including real purchasing power. Chances are, for instance, that most New Yorkers earn more in nominal terms after the Left-induced price inflation of the COVID-countermeasure era, but this does them little good if they earn the same as or less than before in real terms.
Other issues include e.g. that New Yorkers might earn more than residents of Hicksville for comparable jobs, but also have a higher cost of living, e.g. through high rents for apartments. (High rents for business objects, in a next step, might drive up prices in stores, while high living costs tend to drive up wages, which drive up prices further. Etc.) The New Yorker might then be better off when he and the Hicksviller compete in the same market (say, for a purchase on an online platform) but still lose out when it comes to the daily bread, the monthly rent, and the whatnot.
The other side of the coin, demand, is largely what results when very many want to live in a comparatively small area. However, note that e.g. rent controls can artificially keep demand up by reducing the chance that someone moves out of New York in search for lower costs. This brings me to another point, namely, that (Leftists and/or political) attempts to increase affordability tend to be misguided, be it by cutting into supply (as above) or by stimulating demand (as here). See another text for a little more on this.
Or consider the issue of financing affordability measures, say, a government-run grocery store (one of Mamdani’s many ill-advised suggestions) or a food-stamp program: Increase taxes on consumers and they will have less money, with the one hand taking and the other giving and much being wasted in between, and incentives to earn being reduced both through the higher taxes and the handouts. (To boot, there might be incentives to not switch to cheaper-but-equally-serviceable products, e.g. through moving from “brand brands” to “store brands” or by bending one’s back or knees to pick from the bottom shelves.) Increase corporate taxes and prices will increase and businesses might chose to leave, reducing both the tax base and employment opportunities. Print money (on a more national level) and prices will rise. Take on debt and future interest payments will cause future budgetary problems—the more so, if the debt ultimately must be repaid.
With the above two hands, there is usually a redistributive effect, but:
Firstly, such redistribution is not necessarily a good thing even from an affordability (let alone an ethics) point of view, because of complications like incentives, the risk of reduced growth, and waste within the government.
Secondly, taxes and whatnot are usually so all-encompassing that everyone pays, even those who are on the receiving end of redistribution. Not only is there income tax, but they are also hit through e.g. VAT (spending, not income, dependent) and the upwards pressure on prices in light of corporate taxes. (With other taxes-on-others often being relevant, e.g. energy taxes and property taxes.) In some cases, e.g. some schemes of over-extensive health “insurance” and other “welfare state” problems, the citizens need the payments from the government mostly because of the money that the government has previously taken, which has prevented them from building own buffers, made this-or-that too expensive relative disposable income (affordability...), whatnot.
In other words, if there is a problem with affordability for the consumers, this is an argument against Leftism, not in favor of it. However, there is also affordability in other areas, including the government and industry. In the latter case, a lack of affordability (still, often Left-caused) can lead to bankruptcies and loss of both jobs and competition, that businesses cut down on production or fail to expand, that businesses move abroad, whatnot. (As well as, again, the increased prices that tend to follow.) Helping the industry with such problems never seems to be a topic on the Left, however. On the contrary, instead of cutting bureaucracies and reducing taxes (and what else might apply to the case at hand), we might see higher taxes to finance handouts, price controls to “protect” the consumers, more bureaucracy to ensure compliance with this-and-that, etc.—making matters worse, not better. (While Trump’s record on Economics is far from perfect, he at least attempts to attack the problems in this area—very, very much unlike his Leftist counterparts.)
Still, government affordability might be the biggest piece of the puzzle, if often with affordability from a different angle. This angle, however, is also valuable in other areas and further shows how misguided the Leftist take on affordability issues is: To stay within the limits of what one can afford. This, of course, the government rarely does, with problems including ever more debt (with more future costs), more money printing and ensuing price inflation, higher taxes and the problems that they cause, etc. Now, an average New Yorker can neither print money nor take the money of others through taxes, but he can buy today and pay tomorrow in various forms—and when this goes beyond what might be a “necessary evil” problems ensue. Likewise, we have issues like picking more affordable options: The government usually buys with someone else’s money and has too weak incentives to be economical. Indeed, it often has perverse incentives (be it as a collective entity or on the level of individual members) to spend as much as possible to e.g. keep a particular group of voters or lobbyists happy. And what if some New Yorker stubbornly insists on living in New York when he cannot afford it and would be better of moving elsewhere, or insists on those “brand brands” over “store brands”?
An interesting point is that every New Yorker who leaves (within reasonable limits) can reduce the burden on everyone else, e.g. through reducing the competition for living space. If a business or a billionaire leaves, this is almost always a bad thing, but with the average citizen the opposite usually applies for crowded areas, where housing is too scarce, prices are high, employment might be insufficient, ... This the more so, if he is currently drawing on the government’s purse (aka tax-payers’ money).
The point that New Yorkers cannot print money refers to legal activities. Illegal such would serve the printer at the cost of others in a manner quite similar to the government—and add less trust in the currency, a risk that a good-faith recipient of a forged note is caught in a store, whatnot, on top of that. Likewise, a New Yorker who, in lieu of taxing others, grabs a gun to perform a robbery can do similar harm to a taxing government—and add mental trauma, a risk of physical injuries, whatnot, on top of that.
(This indirectly points to another frequent area of governmental failure in Left-run areas, namely, a failure to keep crime in check. However, the main effects on this are not related to affordability and I do not intend to list all Leftist failures.)
Equally valid is the idea of “sustainability”, but it comes with similar problems.
Most notably, use of the term is usually limited to specifically ecological, environmental, or, worse, climate aspects, with no concern for other aspects and typically in a naive manner. Consider the phrase “sustainable growth” (and remember how important growth is to remedy poverty and for affordability, cf. above and [1]) and how it is taken as a shorthand for e.g. “environmentally sustainable growth”, often with implications that “this is the growth that we can afford to have, and if it goes beyond that, New York will be flooded as the ice caps melt”.
For “naive manner”, consider e.g. the frequent use of models over empirical observations, the neglect of the overall environment (e.g. with an eye at heavy metals) in favor of specifically the climate (greenhouse gases), the failure to look at the entire life-cycle of a product and not just what happens at the time of use, and an equating of “electric” with “green” even when the electricity comes from a carbon-fueled power plant.
The below neglect of technological progress is another example.
Here, we have at least two problems:
Firstly, growth and technological progress tend to go hand in hand. Not only, obviously, does technological progress open the doors for growth but growth also open the doors for technological progress, e.g. because research budgets can be made larger and because there are more consumers with the money to spend on technologically more advanced products, should they be brought to market. (Depending on the state of the country at hand, there might also be effects like more growth bringing more educational opportunities and, thereby, engineers and whatnots. This is unlikely to be of importance in e.g. the U.S. of today, however.) In a next step, technological progress often implies less pollution and whatnot, rather than the “more” implicitly assumed by many Leftists and/or environmentalists. Consider e.g. internal combustion engines with a higher efficiency, the introduction of catalytic converters to car exhausts, the importance of better batteries for EVs, what can be gained by use of lighter materials in cars, etc. (Heavy metals, however, is a common exception to this—for now, at least.) Or consider the very great improvements to various aspects of nuclear power, including productive reuse or better treatment of nuclear waste than long-term storage—and how much further such developments could have gone, had it not been for the (irrational, ignorant, or otherwise misguided) hostility against nuclear power from some groups, notably, among European “Greens” and Leftists. Chances are that a more pro-growth attitude would allow solutions to threats that are used as arguments against growth by technology.
An interesting question, but one where I can do no more than speculate, is whether there is a more general anti-growth attitude in some groups, with the specific idea that less growth can make it easier to keep the Left in power, e.g. through faux affordability arguments, the ability to promise redistributions that would not meet the approval of the naive masses in the presence of more growth, the ability to stir hatred against “greedy capitalists” for the consequences of Leftists policies, whatnot.
Secondly, what about other types of sustainability—the ability to sustain growth, above all? Well, most Western nations have a dismal record over long stretches of time, in particular between the end of the post-WWII booms and the beginning of the Reagan/Thatcher era, and from the IT-crash around the millennium until today. This the more so when adjusted to real terms and after factoring in the benefits brought by technology (without which the record is still more dismal). The reason is, to a very large part, destructive government interventions, growth of governmental bureaucracy, governmental hindrances to entrepreneurship, governmental obstacles to free markets and free competition, whatnot. (While the government still, contrafactually, tries to blame the hampered market forces for its own failures.)
This includes naive takes on Keynesian ideas (where there might be some debate whether the ideas are inherently naive or whether the specific take is), where money is withdrawn from the free economy so that the government can “stimulate” the economy, while doing a net damage relative leaving the money where it was, and attempts to push never ending growth by means like money printing and low bank/whatnot rates (the names, types, and exact mechanisms vary). Such means, however, neither reflect natural growth nor do they necessarily result in sound growth, and there are great risks of unsustainability and misallocation. At worst, they can amount to purely nominal growth through price inflation without an underlying real growth.
To sustainable growth in the sense of growth that can be sustained, note that growth is cumulative, implying that a consistent real increase of 1 percent per year will, over time, amount to much, much more than would a single such increase.
(Likewise, a continued price inflation of 10 percent per year does not make prices 10 percent higher once—the price increase and the hollowing out of the currency accumulates over time. Ditto the 2 percent often seen as the “right” amount by governments. In particular, contrary to what some idiots genuinely seemed to believe about the inflation of the COVID-countermeasure era, a return of price inflation to a lower level will not magically restore prices to what they were—it will just reduce the continued deterioration.)
To boot, the effect is multiplicative, not additive, which makes a great difference for higher rates and/or longer times. For instance, a real growth rate of a (multiplicative) single percent more per year would double the real economy in approximately 70 years, two percent in 35 years, four percent in 18 years. Go 70 years with two percent, and the economy would be four times larger, 70 years at four percent almost sixteen times larger, etc.
Now, four percent over 70 years might not be realistic, but to do just one percent better (in geometric average) than the real-world politicians is another matter—as is going with a higher percentage relative a shorter time of greater mismanagement. Imagine how different the world would be, if the current economy was twice the size that it actually is in real terms and without unsustainable bolstering.
Here, also note idiocies like the ECtHR condemning Switzerland for allegedly failing future generations on climate issues, while no such judgments (to the best of my knowledge) relate to matters of destroyed growth (or unnecessary price inflation) over decades and in a great many countries.
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