Many academics I see online are leftist whereas many laypeople I see online are right wing.
In academia you are trained to not accept any claim without adequate evidence. Look at left wing claims vs. right wing ones and show me one that has better evidence on the right.
There are plenty of right wing academics but they are a minority. It probably varies by field too. In the core sciences that minority is probably the smallest and is greater in the humanities. My professor was a right wing scientist and we often clashed on values. I felt sorry for him at times because it would be his point of view Vs the entire research group. He is fundamentally a good person that can hold illogical and contradictory opinions that felt like they were emotionally based.
There are fewer right-wingers in academia, and they tend to work at schools with right-wing orientations. Turns out reality has a liberal bias.
what do you mean when you say “reality has a liberal bias”? I have heard another person saying that too but I did not get that.
It means most things hardline conservatives are angry or paranoid about are misperceptions, not realities. For example, most people who are different from you aren’t out to get you.
The reason that there are less ‘right wing’ people in academia is that academia usually involves research and understanding of the world and its systems and most ‘right wing’ opinions do not hold up to investigation. So, therefore, reality itself appears to have a liberal bias as opposed to admitting you’re wrong about anything.
That’s the root of it, basically.
For the record, I agree with the statement, for what it’s worth.
The meaning of that phrase about “liberal bias” is reflected in things like the rich exploiting the poor and polluting the earth, “liberal” viewpoint but true in reality. Or the rich manipulating elections and using the military to further imperialism, leftist “opinions” but verifiable in reality.
That’s the thing about right-wing populism. It relies on primitive instincts. It’s a baseline. It requires no effort.
Rich people are smarter, otherwise they wouln’t be rich. No don’t tax them, they worked so much harder than anyone else to get there! Taxing them will only punish the imaginative and the resourceful, while incentivising the lazy and the worthless. I blame the immigrants because they work harder and for less money, and it’s their fault that I also have to work harder for less! We need one more lane, that would relieve the traffic so much!
These takes always seem super OBVIOUS at first, and if you never bother revising them - you’ll just be stuck with them. The longer you live with them, the firmer you’ll latch onto them.
That’s why it’s so crucial for the rightwingers to dismantle the education system. They need you to be ignorant. Take things face-value.
Yeah I have seen it myself that many right wingers don’t like the education system and they would glorify “the past”.
Reality has a left wing bias. They exist though and they’re infuriating.
I’m sure there are some academics who are right wing and some uneducated people who are left wing. But for the most part it is generally true that academics are more likely to be left wing. To put it rudely, stupid people generally believe right wing talking points. Right wing worldview is full of contradictions an uneducated beliefs. People who are curious and bother to educate themselves about the issues are generally more likely to be left wing. Than again, I am left wing so of course I’m going to be biased towards believing left wing views are smart
I initially was right but now am reconsidering that stance.
Are you confusing liberal with leftist?
The actual left begins at anticapitalism. American academia is full of liberals, who are right-wingers that believe in capitalism even though the most liberal controlled states proves it doesn’t work. (Read: California’s massive homelessness problem.)
Where I live, we use the term “liberal” for “progressive minded”.
This is a very important point. “Liberal” has different meanings and the english language is not very helpfull in distinguishing that. Useful article: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-10658070
In political theory liberalism is considered right-wing because it is a pro-capitalist ideology. “Liberal” is used to describe anyone somewhat progress in the US and among some others but the term is used differently by political theorists and most people outside of the US. Many academics are right-wing, most academic institutions are explicitly right wing because they are pro-capitalist even if they are more “progressive” socially. Though the students and faculty are typically much more left than the school administration.
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I never heard that guy once in my life but yeah keep projecting.
How is that rude? They are just stating the fact of how liberal is used colloquially, you don’t need to jump on the offense. Their username is literally “naive”.
One of physics professors in my uni loved Elon Musk, and has photo with Trump.
(Latter one for a presidential award they won, to give the benefit of doubt)
Current STEM researcher who also happened to have met a few academics on the right side of the political spectrum… I am very qualified to speak about this I hope. I’ll try to use as unbiased language as possible
First of all, you are correct. It is generally true that most academics are left-leaning (obligatory not all, but you get the point)
In general, higher education attainment is associated with being left-leaning: academia is known to have extreme levels of education attainment (many jobs require a PhD). On top of it, academic jobs reward intellectual curiosity, do not tend to pay super well, tend to heavily rely on governmental funding… all of these are traditionally more associated with the political left or left-leaning. Still, there very much are right-leaning academics, they just don’t tend to scream around a lot about it
There are notable exceptions however. Economics is quite famous for being politically balanced, although what economics treat as left/right-leaning might be a bit different from the general public. If I remember, business schools (yes there are business professors!) tend to be more right-leaning. This is a smaller field and a bit more anecdotal, but quite a few prominent meta-science researchers are right-wing nutjobs: the “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” guy and the NIH director Bhattacharya guy are both COVID deniers
There are also fringe scientists as some others have mentioned, but most people within their fields don’t consider fringe scientists as part of the academia so to speak
There was an HIV denier at NIH in the 90s but no one remembers his name. There are plenty of right wing MDs and scientist in pharma.
Damn, I am right leaning but I do not deny COVID. Interesting though. I also noticed that in Computer Science too, there are a lot of right wing people, especially these days being pro-AI is often a symbol of being right wing.
First of all: you’re good! I think there are lots of centrist and right-leaning people in academia who are doing just fine; especially in the US lots of world-class unis are in deeply conservative areas too. Most of academia don’t discuss politics that much at all as long as one cares about science. I’d wager the political leaning bias is more from a population bias rather than systematic discrimination of any sort
I could imagine AI researchers being more right-leaning yeah. The stats I got were from personal anecdote and research being done about this a short while back… there might have been an update in the AI age
It depends on the country, but there’s a self-preservation aspect to academics leaning left. In the USA especially but not exclusively a major right-wing policy point has been defunding academia and publicly-funded research in general. Unless you’re in a field that can reliably pull private funding, such as some branches of the oft-mentioned economics, voting and sharing right-wing talking points carries a major risk of getting your funding cut and leaving you without a job.
In my country, there is barely any left wing.
Unaware. Go into accounting to find a bunch.
I got a book on Principles of Accountings from two professors in BYU (kinda old book though) and it sounded way capitalist from its starting pages.
Depends on what you call “academics”. If you mistake phrase shifter courses like “business administration”, “politics”, or “law” as academic, then yes.
Nah not that specifically. I meant like in social sciences and humanities (other fields are welcome but my main motive was these fields).
Social sciences and humanities are a classic leftist field. And MINT scientists are usually too smart to be right wingers.
what is MINT? I am in STEM but I adore the people in social sciences and humanities. Sadly, humanities is dying especially in my country. Barely anyone wants to read social sciences and humanities, as we are a developing country and also just want money
MINT Mathematics, Information science, Natural sciences, and Technology.
Probably people who are curious and want to learn how the universe really is, who climb to the highest levels of Perry’s scheme of cognition, who use Sagan’s baloney detection kit, rather than supernatural and unfalsifiable excuses, to understand the cosmos. It’s part of the scientific method and great to learn new things, not mistakes but data for next experiment, and big claims require big proof, like defending a thesis should require. We are all waves of one ocean made of stardust, observing the universe, conscious elements billions of years old. DNA that survived all the extinctions so far, on the one habitable planet, and nothing to rescue us, but human cooperation.
If you want faith, it must allow room for doubt and mystery, rather than twisted to demand certainty and remain in Perry’s low levels overall. They could study the neurochemical ways high-control groups hook people and keep them with unhealthy shame/blame/guilt, threat of exile, conditional belonging, solution for invented problem, punish/reward cycles, and maybe choose to escape. Good luck!
IMO:There are 3 type of “right wingers”:
- The sheeps (the majority about 90%) they are less educated, easy to manipulate & very reactionary.
- The shepherds (the minority about 1%) they are highly educated, come from generational wealth & want to defend & multiply their wealth by influenving the sheeps.
- The sheep dogs (about 9%) they are highly educated & very oportunistic. They don’t come from wealth and dream of wealth. Their only goal in life is to be shepherds one day. (Most likely they won’t achieve it maybe one will make it to be uaed a champion that it’s possible) but they will do everything to achieve it and thus work overtime for the shepherds & influence the sheeps as much aa poaaible.
So yeah, about 10% of the right wingers are educated. The majority still is less educazed and easy to manipulatw.
Believe it or not, there are well educated, intelligent and well intended people in the right wing. Not the majority, by any chance, but I’ve met these people. I’m not saying they’re right, but assuming the only possible causes for their beliefs are either ignorance or ill will/greed just feeds the polarization that’s currently destroying western civilization.
What is their answer to “people are hungry and die of starvation or not being able to afford needs, while others have more money than what’s possible to spend in hundreds of lifetimes of extreme luxury, what should be done about that?”? Because I can’t imagine an educated, well intentioned answer to it, either you’re too dumb to understand reality or you’re okay with people suffering and dying.
the claim that they can’t spend the money in hundreds of lifetimes pisses me off because it means you aren’t creative enough to think of new, more idiotic, ways of spending money.
Jef bezos net worth is 284 billion, a very bad investment yields 4% annually, that roughly translates to 11.4 billion per year, or around a billion per month, or around 31 million per day, 1.3 million per hour, or 22 thousand per minute.
In the time it took me to write this, of Jeff Bezos is stupid (which he’s not) and does very bad and safe investments he already earned over 100 thousand. The time it takes you to think on an innovative idea to spend money they already earned more than what you would spend, and the time it takes to do anything they already earned more. Think about this, of they wanted to buy a million dollar house on a different country that would take them 12h to reach by private jet, they literally lost no money buying the house and traveling there to sign the papers and fly back.
I dare you to tell me something that would actually lose them more money than what they would earn in the time it takes to enjoy it.
Intelligent people have an easier time convincing themselves of falsehoods because they can produce more complex rationalizations.
Good video on the topic. TL;DR: They believe it’s inevitable and not something you can just fix/that you can only fix very slowly. It’s a fucking stupid worldview, but not an impossible one, though it’s not hard to see why such worldviews tend to come from positions of privilege.
Common subsets of this category (cynics) I’ve seen or met include those who are (A) opportunists working the corporate funding angle who are allowed or even encouraged to do so by their departments/institutions, and (B) obligate centrists who are so reticent to be identified as leaning in any particular direction politically that they effectively accept or even endorse any and every systemic injustice.
Subgroup A are quite prevalent in journals yet tend to have markedly low-quality contributions comparatively, leading me think they are over-represented in peer review especially, easily a symptom of corruption inherent to private journals.
Subgroup B are IMO the academic version of MLK’s “white moderate” who are simply self-interested careerists. I would say these are by far the most common by number. They aren’t working for the Right directly like subgroup A, but they won’t lift a finger to help if it might jeopardize their position. That is to say, cowards.
It varies.
If it’s someone who is, themselves, very well-off, it goes one of two ways. Either a deontological “property is inviolable and so it doesn’t matter”, or “this money is fair compensation for just how awesome I am”. The latter of which implies they’ve already done enough for their lessers, so shut up.
“Only Americans are human, so yes, I guess we should help the American poor” is basically the MAGA answer. That also used to be the German answer. Some grifters also use the same logic, but with an even smaller group of people they care about, like just their own family.
Somebody else mentioned “it’s the way it’s always been/inevitable”, but if you’re educated at all, you’ll know better, because nothing is like it was in 1700. So, that’s not an answer to your question.
(You’ll notice a common strain, that people tend to pick a worldview that’s convenient for them, personally. That actually goes for the left wing, as well)
I don’t know what all of their answers are, but as a latin american I can offer you my perspective of hunger and starvation not being exclusive to the right wing and extreme luxury being something many left wing politicians will happily indulge in once elected, while their populace live in misery.
Many of them do believe in different forms of redistribution too. Right wing political stances do not equate to “give every last penny to the rich and private sector”. Political perspectives have nuance.
I’m also a latin american, I’m not saying corruption doesn’t exist on the left wing, or that they’re not assholes who will go crazy with power. Also I’m not saying voting right wing is always the wrong thing to do, for me authoritarian/democratic is much more important than left/right, so if my choices are authoritarian left vs democratic right, I’ll vote right.
But fundamentally when asked about inequality the right wing answer is always along the lines of “it is what it is” or “it will be solved very slowly over the next hundreds of years by not doing anything”, both of which are either ignorant or evil, and of you’re talking about an educated person one of those should be off the table.
Not who you’re replying to, but sounds like Latin Americans are more familiar than the US by far with leftist populist dictators, Fidel Castro types… The cigar smoking kinda guys who inspired the game Tropico.
In the US, we teach that communism is a mortal enemy that only leads to starvation and we elect greedy oligarchs that promise life will get better eventually while they fill their pockets. Socialism is seen as the extreme anti-State solution where no one starves and everyone is educated. And any evidence to the contrary is considered conservative propaganda.
There’s little room for nuance in the US. We went so far right that it feels like you have to move all the way left to fix things. And the more they call socialism the enemy, the better it sounds to people. The youth grow up thinking, either they support Trump or they’re a socialist… He’s probably doing more for socialism than American socialists ever did.
I swear just having free healthcare in the 90s could have prevented all this.
I kinda went on a rant here, lol, but feel free to not read. I have very similar opinions, but wanted to make a few points.
The Fidel types are the more colorful examples, but we have many more. There’s also the not-quite-dictators-but-dangerously-close- types, who make use of authoritarianism, media control, persecution of political adversaries, and shady democratic tactics such as Hugo Chavez & Maduro, Juan Domingo Peron, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Christina Kirchner,
Lula da Silva(don’t have enough info on this guy to put him in the same bag w the rest)… I’m sure some other latinamerican will see this and tell me the alternatives were far worse, and they’ll likely be right, but I’d bet money NO latin american will dare tell me any of these were fair ethical leaders with the best interest of their country in mind.And I fully agree with your point. You guys went so far down right, (and you might hate me a bit for making this point) but your left parties are also the right wing. They might not cater to the same lobbyists, but it seems more and more to me than there is no true will to offer reasonable state services or social security nets for the vast majority of the population by either party of yours. The dems have been as much in bed with your highly toxic financial and pharma sectors as the republicans have for decades now. Your left wing politicians attempt to get elected by sending feel good messages to a comfortable middle class that wants to care but to not sacrifice anything of their own or even worse: to consort/share spaces with actual poor people.
I’m talking the people who have half of the male members of their family in prison. I’m talking people who’s entire family is unemployed and unemployable. Generational misery. The people under the bridge. Sex workers, foster care kids, people in trailer parks with no running water and the roughest parts of the ghettos.
The actual poor people, ignorant and naive as they may be in many regards, saw right through charade of policies and philosophies that sound oh-so-humane but don’t actually substantially help anyone in their precarious conditions, and said “fuck em”, and in their anger, despair, naivete and ignorance went straight into the clutches of “the exact opposite of what I hate” and now we have Trump. I say we, because I consider my country a client/vassal state of the US.
And yeah, free healthcare sounds so foreign and far away nowadays, doesn’t it? Yet poorer countries pull it off relatively well. Horrible that we’ve gotten to this point of brainwashing by big industries/interest groups.
I’m not sharing these thoughts to tell you your left wing is no good and nothing good can come from it. To the contrary. You guys (and we) need a strong, powerful and healthy left wing and I really really hope you can get there. I am, however, warning you against the perils of voting for “OMG THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF THIS” because in latina america we’ve seen that movie plenty of times and it ends in “so I guess now we have a dictator”.
Sorry for the rant. Just felt like sharing my thoughts in this regard.
I truly wish you, your country and the world the very best, and I also think a healthy socialist system is the right path. Hopefully we get somewhere nice without any more atrocities happening.
My left leaning classmate also says that American left is also right. Unfortunately, I never got a popular enough left in my country. All parties are just right and far right.
I agree with most of what you said, but there’s one thing we STRONGLY disagree with, and that is Lula. The others you mentioned I either don’t know enough to have a strong opinion or (most of them) wholeheartedly agree that are authoritarians with only their own interests in mind. But putting Lula in the same bag as those guys shows that either you don’t know enough about him, or that you fell for the misinformation campaigns done by the Brazilian extreme right when trying to get elected.
And I’m case we’re not clear, I’m a latin american who lived during most of Lula’s governments in Brazil and I think he is a fair and ethical leader with the best interest of its people in mind. And if I were allowed to vote in Brazil I would have voted for him, without a doubt.
So, instead of assuming your information on him and trying to explain all of the policies he created through all of his governments, I’ll ask you what makes you think he’s like that?
It’s very safe to assume you’re better informed about him than I am. There was definitely a smudging campaign that we caught a lot of here, and I don’t remember the charges he did time for other than them vaguely being about ‘corruption’. I think it’s pretty safe to assume he was taking more than a little something on the side, as it would be with the vast majority of our presidents, but I won’t hold that against him. I vaguely recall something about money laundering and a luxurious apartment. But anyway, that’s not my issue with him. He had close ties with Christina Kirchner, which is well known to have had people killed for investigating her, and i remember something about him and her wanting to make some kind of latin american alliance thing which I consider a terrifying idea. There were also stuff about political persecution of the bolsonaro nutjob proteters but I’ll take that with a big pinch of salt.
Anyway, I’ll take your word over mine and edit my post.
Nah I read it all and fully agree. 🫡 Wishing you the best American sibling wherever you are. I still have some hope things can turn around but it’s hard to see the light right now with corruption as rampant as it is.
It’s always a reminder to appreciate what you have right now, because I do think things will get worse before they get better. I don’t take the relative peace, shelter, running water and electricity for granted, and I similarly shouldn’t be terrified of a day coming when all that isn’t available. Just good to prep some emergency cash and stuff when you can and ride out the bullshit best you can.
I think I’m just sad that Trump won over as many Americans as he did with hate rhetoric, but can’t say we weren’t warned that this sentiment was building.
Good thinking on the prepping, and wishing you the best as well. The current state of affairs really is a tragedy, but there is always hope. <3
Man, I really hope people read this and take it to heart. Comfortable middle class Westerner who wants “OMG THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF THIS” is the average Lemmy user.
(That’s me too, but only half way, and I don’t want the complete opposite of anything)
I’m comfortable enough too, compared to how things go for the lower percentiles here, but yeah. People freak out and overreact. Most lemmy people seem to be in a perpetual state of outrage and panic, which, you know, understandable, but the first people to get screwed in any crisis are the ones that panic. I’ve been making an effort to try to emotionally regulate the people I come across here the best I can when possible, but man… it’s challenging.
Well intended towards themselves and their own. By definition there are none who are well intended towards humanity in general, since Conservatism in all its forms relies on in- and out-groups of people.
I’m not sure how you can be on lemmy or reddit and not recognize out-grouping from the left. Groups fundamentally define themselves by what they aren’t. And each group will strawman the other to strongarm their adherents into staying within the group.
Communist. Pink haired liberals. Nazis. Fascists. Meaningless boring out-group names that are repeated ad nauseum. But go. Indulge. Join a team and have fun. But don’t sacrifice real relationships for some politician. Be smarter than that.
That missed the point entirely.
In-groups: The law protects these people, but it does not restrict them.
Out-groups: The law restricts these people, but it does not protect them.
This is a core structure of conservatives. There is no similar core structure for the left because the left does not rely on it.
Hmmm, I bet it’s no secret who your team is!
You, once again, miss the point entirely.
Belief that everyone is part of a camp is tenuous to say the least and leads to a us and them rhetoric that prevents us from properly defining subjects.
Part of this is simply conservativism is a backwards philosophy that looks to reinforce traditional hierarchy. Conservatives might not like this reality, but that is another discussion.
You are missing the point. Conservatism isn’t anything that you, specifically, believe it is.
That 's why I don’t believe in politics.
I don’t believe in air, but damnit, it keeps pressing down on me!
Isn’t that gravity though
Well-intended, sure. Everyone is the protagonist of their own story.
Intelligent, maybe, although that’s always going to push a person towards something a bit more nuanced. Other personality defects have to pick up the slack.
Educated, well, that depends on what they studied. Engineers and doctors don’t really learn much that prevents you from being a bad person. It’s hard to imagine a modern anthropologist buying into whatever fascist nonsense, though.
right wing political policy does not necessarily equate to fascism. jesus.
It’s true.
The version that’s going around right now is more like that, though. Reagan is very dead. Free markets are out, blood and soil is in.
The current US right wing leader is destroying any possibility the sensible right wing concerns get any attention, but just because something took a turn to the dark side doesn’t mean there was nothing worthwhile in it to begin with.
Which specific right wing concerns are worthwhile?
Healthy right wing politics often promote the possibilities of small businesses to thrive in ethical ways, not the defense of unholy monopolies or abusive employment conditions. They are also more traditionally concerned with individual freedoms and right to privacy. What we are seeing now in US and global politics is not a balanced representation of right wing any more than pol pot is a fair representation of the left. It’s a full blown authoritarian police state kleptocracy, and as us in the third world can testify, these can come from either side.
Do you have some examples of sheep dogs? The movement, as I’ve seen it, seems like a pretty straight continuum from sheep to shepherd. Either you’re successfully grifting, a sucker, or both.
I think they meant to call the unsuccessful grifting suckers sheep dogs. In Andrew Tate world, the word for it is “sigma male”.
It seems possible OP is actually classifying the shepherds/grifters as sheepdogs, and imagining a separate group at the top that doesn’t exist.
Andrew Tate is a great example. Obviously, most of his whole persona is fake, and obviously, he made a good deal of money from it, but his background is relatively ordinary. Lots of people in the White House are only marginally different from that.
They are fewer than those who lean left but they are there. And typically they tend more toward moderation that extremism. Quintessentially, they’re moderate to liberal conservatives. Often times you’ll find them more in business and economics related fields.
The main reason being that exposure typically gets a person to come out of their highly conservative nature and education as well to better understand how the world operates. It’s not a 100% thing as there are occasional reactionaries in positions of scientific note but they’re few.
