Pen's Blog

Leftists Suck at Slogans

Jan 6, 2024

Slogans. Everybody loves them! Or so I've been told. The art of compressing a large political ideology into a few words is a difficult one, but leftists seem to have a particularly difficult time when they decide to make a slogan. Of course, when I say leftism in this post, know I am referring to both the cultural left, which seeks cultural justice, and the economic left, which seeks economic justice. Intersectionality! However, I will mainly talk about the cultural left, because they use slogans a bit more, at least from what I've seen. Also, disclaimer, this is mostly about American politics because I live in America.

One of the most common intentionally misunderstood slogans is that of "Black Lives Matter". BLM. At first glance, this slogan seems fine. It calls attention to racial injustice and police violence. If you weren't trying to take this in bad faith, you'd think it was perfectly serviceable. Of course, if you do try to take this statement in bad faith, it is INCREDIBLY easy to mess up. You know it, you hate it, it's "All Lives Matter"!! Right-wing pundits can point and say those words whenever the slogan is brought up. They'll say something about how the woke BLM anarchists think that white people are trash, and we're back at square one. Black Lives Matter? White lives must not. This slogan, and others like it, can be intentionally misconstrued.

Another one of these easy to take in bad faith slogans is "ACAB", which stands for "All Cops Are Bastards". I'm not here to debate whether all cops are bastards or not, but this is undeniably an unpalatable slogan to the general public. Most people don't want to think that every cop is a bastard. They think this slogan is overly aggressive, alongside its cousin "Defund The Police". It's a common childhood dream, or so I've been told, to be a police officer. I don't understand, because I always wanted to be a mad scientist when I was growing up. But many people like the police. These slogans suffer from being too aggressive.

In my opinion, "Good Cops Don't Last" is the cooler younger sibling of this slogan. It's a lot more understandable. With ACAB, you might imagine some sort of evil magical crystal in a police station corrupting the minds of our public servants. This is, of course, a ridiculous notion. Evil magic crystals are not real, or, at least I hope they aren't. "Good Cops Don't Last" instead projects an image of a young spritely officer coming into work and being worn down by the systemic corruption, either turning into a bad cop or quitting their job.

Finally, my last bad slogan isn't a slogan, but the name of an ideology. Feminism. Feminism, if you aren't an insane person, is all about equality. Some people wouldn't think that, however. This is similar to the misunderstanding with BLM. People who want to take this in bad faith will look at the name of this school of thought and think about how feminism must be about female supremacy, and how they must hate men. I know about a lot of people who WOULD be feminists, but who get turned off by the name. I WAS ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE. I thought of myself as an "Egalitarian", rather than a feminist. I believed everything feminists believe, but intentional misunderstanding by conservatives and feminism's branding issue turned me off from calling myself a feminist. Of course, I got better. Also trans.

There's a point I'm making here. Leftist phrases are either easily misconstrued in bad faith, or overly aggressive, pushing away people who aren't completely on board. Don't even get me started on the decades-long demonization of Socialism and Communism as pure evil. Even within leftist circles, activists have different interpretations of these quick, undetailed statements (infighting reference).

Now, right now you're probably saying something like, "Wow Pen, this is an insightful way of looking at politics I haven't thought of before, but what do you want me to do about it?". Or perhaps you've thought of something like this before, you clever cookie. Some people (not me), have come up with this "super-capitalism" idea, where we call socialism "super-capitalism". Under "super-capitalism", each employee will own part of the company. I don't really approve of this, we should aim to have a political identity that reaches beyond capitalism. We shouldn't seek "super-capitalism", we should seek anti-capitalism. Of course, in the words of Frederic Jameson, "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than imagine the end of capitalism". To alter the rhetoric of leftism so it can surpass its poor reputation, it would no longer resemble itself. The truth is that even if you made a bulletproof slogan, the right would attack it. They don't hate the slogans. The right doesn't dislike the left because of how its adherents phrase their beliefs, they dislike the beliefs.

What's the point here? What conclusion have we reached? In my opinion, the right will always hate the left, no matter how they phrase their beliefs. However, leftists can work to make their slogans more watertight. Slogans aren't for winning over the right, they're for the left and the moderates, but if we keep making such easy to misunderstand slogans, the right will always win over the moderate. You may say the moderate isn't worth winning over, but you yourself were once a moderate. Surely you were not born anti-capitalist, defending the rights of minorities. I am not under the delusion that this post will change anything regarding this issue. However, I do hope you considered something you haven't before.