Many academics I see online are leftist whereas many laypeople I see online are right wing.
At Uni i sometimes wished for a rightwing person just to debate things. Everyone agreed on most issues,so there we’re rarely spicy debates.
For debate, I’d be willing to take a different position.
There are, but they often kicked out of academia pretty quickly because academic universties dont want to be associated with these people because it discredits the Universities reputation, by providing pseudoscientific beliefs.
J peterson, recently SABINE from youtube, you dint mentioned failed academics too, MDs like she claims she was “ousted from academia in germany, because shes a women” but it was actually are far right views(funded by friends of thiel), and then another one that claims " being a POC played a part why they are not “smart” enough for certian jobs, because they have tendancy towards not being intelligent.
so these people become “influencers” for the far right. when i was in CC, one of my gen bio prof told us that she had a student that was christian, and she was only giving answers on HW/tests as “GOD did it”. nevertheless, they had to drop out of COLLEGE.
if there was, they would have to constantly challenge the research, studies out there in academia that contradicts them. theres no way they stay in academia, and thier “own” research is based entirely on assumptions and outdated research.
Being an academic means being open minded because when researching something, the outcome may be different from what you expected. In such cases do you concede that your initial theory was wrong or do you stubbornly continue to believe that you were right and keep trying to prove yourself correct?
You can find stats showing that support for the Conservatives falls in Canada as education rises. So depending on region and definition, it’s not just you.
That being said, that doesn’t mean there are zero. Jordan Peterson as a famous example.
It’s the same in Germany. Support for our right wing party is dropping as education rises. So if you are more educated you’re less likely to vote for them.
“A moron with higher education is still a moron.”
It depends on the source of academia.
There are a lot of sources beyond universities that do research, including various public policy research institutes or think tanks. They have a spectrum of different ideologies, but a lot of them tend to go more conservative as a lot of them rely on private funding and rich people like having studies which back up their views. If you’re a leftist and need a patron to find your research, it is more likely you’re going to find a government patron than a private patron. If you’re a conservative, you’ll probably find more money in private organizations to perform your research.
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.
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.
That 's why I don’t believe in politics.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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 know a right wing guy who has a PhD, speaks 5 different languages and is an immigrant. He says that you can tell which immigrants are terrorists by just looking at them and everyone who looks like that should be arrested.
I know another right wing guy who has a PhD in Informatics and owns 20 houses in Amsterdam. He doesn’t see the problem. People can just move somewhere else.
Both of them don’t just have PhDs, they work as academics, one in Berlin the other in Amsterdam.
seems like the second is more wealthy, and he likely comes from wealth which are often more conservative.
Let them
eat cakemove countries
The correlation is there. It’s there more generally for education level - more educated people are usually more left wing. (And richer, which is a bit of a funny situation if you’re doing class war)
Obviously, there’s exceptions. Somebody mentioned techbros, and economists can fall anywhere. Probably there’s shitty nationalist historians still kicking around, as well.
This isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, although as more people achieve greater education, it looks a bit different. You’ll remember most of the Reich’s great scientists ended up working on the Manhattan project.
Go to any school of economics, comp sci faculty, school of business and dare i say biology and you’ll find a lot of em. They tend to be less vocal. Historians too.
Historians you say? What decade i wonder…
i’m not sure what you mean. of what generation?
In my experience Biology not as much, but maybe that differs by country.
Probably depends where the Bayer funding is at.
They exist, but the problem is reality has a liberal bias and academics tend to follow the evidence.
No, plenty of scientists and a disturbing number of physician scientists are GOP voters. They tend to be the ones who sleep with their trainees and cheat on their spouses. They don’t think sexual harassment is a real thing and don’t understand why women complain about anything. They occasionally get fired for their behavior but get hired elsewhere because they can find like-minded individuals who couldn’t care less about sexual misconduct at work. Recently there was a lot of noise about hiring a physician scientist and he was just about to start when people started pointing out that he was fired from his last job for surreptitiously filming the women’s locker room and bathroom.
OLDer MDs and scientists from the boomer era tend to be conservatives, because to be an MD and scientist in those times require you to be somewhat rich or well off.
You’re not familiar with techbros?
They’re the first ones to reject universities and accuse them of indoctrination. That’s why most of them are “self-made” aka nepobabies.
You’d have to be fucking stupid to be right wing and generally academically inclined individuals are not stupid, so…
There’s probably a small bunch that claim to be right wing because they have a lot of money and greed eclipses intelligence.
Yes, this is a real thing. The “right wing” right now covers both free market ideas, and the nationalist mercantalism thing that’s actually succeeding in the polls. There’s not much shared between them.
Perhaps Jordan Peterson can give you some tips about where to find rabid right-wing lunatics in academia.
and lecture about why its not good idea to go to RUSSIA to treat your BENZO withdrawals.
They are all in prison for accidentally misgendering students once. /s
There are a whole string of rightwing colleges created so they don’t have to listen to liberals and their science. (sorry for the formatting mess)
University Founder / Affiliation Founded
Liberty University Jerry Falwell 1971
Regent University Pat Robertson 1977
Bob Jones University Bob Jones Sr. 1927
Cedarville University Baptist (Ohio) 1887
Biola University Christian Churches 1908
Harding University Churches of Christ 1925
Maranatha Baptist University Fundamental Baptist 1943
Samford University Southern Baptist 1901
North Greenville University Baptist 1924
Grove City College Baptist 1930
Brigham Young University LDS Church 1875
Trinity University Baptist 1840
Oral Roberts University Oral Roberts (Pentecostal) 1963
Texas Christian University Methodist 1873
Wheaton College Christian (evangelical) 1860
Hillsdale college?
The birthplace of conservatism.
Where’s Pepperdyne on this list? Society’s most massive assholes have degrees from there.
I never said the list was all inclusive. Feel free to add some more.
Yeah, and I guess we’ve each brought up a point that bears observing: the Right is increasingly synonymous with evangelical Christianity, which does NOT stand up to academic scrutiny. If you want to make someone an atheist, there’s no surer way to do so then send them to seminary.
Or raise them as a catholic, like me.
They shoved so much bullshit down my throat as i was growing up that i consider my self cured of that illness.
